Corporate hospitals have become more hospitable. Hospitals
too are star rated just like the hotels. There are five star hospitals that
provide almost all what you can expect in a five star hotel besides oxygen from
the ventilator and sundry other life-support services. Hospitals ‘treat’
patients while hotels are a place to ‘treat’ friends or family! Healthcare is
what the industry is called, while most hospitals remain disease cure
centres.
In a recent blog written by Prof. Henry Mintzberg (McGill
University, Montreal) he discusses the question on who should manage a
hospital. In a quick analysis he says that a typical doctor is focussed on
cure, the nurse is focussed on patient care and the administrator is focussed
on controlling the operations. Therefore, individually none of these fit the
bill to be the best CEO of a hospital, barring exceptions. However, he suggests
that someone with fair knowledge and experience of the hospital operations
should manage the hospital.
A large multi-speciality hospital catering to different
kinds of patients is a fairly complex organization to run than a typical
industrial organization focussed on one industry segment. Every moment can be
critical to the life of many customers going through the hospital system.
However, like other organizations, a hospital too employs a number of people of
varying skill endowments performing different roles in different departments.
They too deal with external vendors who provide medical, surgical and general
supplies and allied services. Like other organizations a hospital tries to
satisfy its customers and in the process some of them also get dissatisfied and
go to other hospitals and worse, some of them are carted out as dead bodies.
In a hospital cure has limitations, care is always felt not
enough and control is in many hands and at times goes out of hand! So the
challenge is in maximising all the three aspects- cure, care and control. Advancement
in technology and medicines tend to improve cure for increasingly large number
of diseases. ERP software and management expertise tend to improve control and
efficiency of hospital administration. However, care remains largely in the
hands of relatively underpaid and usually less than motivated nursing staff.
While reflecting on these, I felt these three aspects in the
running of a hospital probably apply equally to most other organizations. Any
business has to deal with the immediate problems that need cure or corrective
actions. The employees and other stake holders need care-a certain level of
comfort, facilities, regular communication and recognition. A number of
internal and external processes and exceptional behaviours need to be
controlled.
Where does most of the management time get expended? Bulk of
the management time is spent on problem solving and planning and controlling
resources, processes and people. These are, no doubt, priority areas for any
organization to focus. But who cares about care? Customer care has become
priority for many businesses either because it is a business survival issue or
it is a very profitable thing to do. In competitive industries clients can
switch vendors if the service is poor. Many product businesses make most of
their profits from after sale services which they control either directly or
through designated channels of partners leaving very limited choice to the
customers. Employee care is less so and caring for the society and environment
is even far less so. Here lies the imbalance in the practice of business
management.
‘The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while
nature cures the disease.’ – Voltaire
