Arts & Commerce of Hospital Management

Having ushered into the second decade of the new millennium, the healthcare sector has introduced cutting edge technology replacing the obsolete ones. This publication was launched in view of the fact that hospitals are facing a dearth of managerial skills, stringent competition, resource crunch and losing touch with patients. The need of the hour is knowledge-based performance that considers management issues in par with medical issues. The book is divided into two parts. The first part deals with a series of psychosocial paradigms of hospital management penetrating areas such as: leadership, motivation, morale, human relations at work and industrial relations. This text enables healthcare managers to develop expertise in motivating workforce for attaining better results. A unique feature of this book is on decision making as hospitals of today require accuracy and mere guess work and lose unpaid opinions could be expensive and risky. Formation of hospital policy manual is equally important and managers can develop the art of writing hospital policies and implement in their set up. The book provides a unique approach to managerial issues based on structure, strategy and system and the organic model built on the development of purpose, process and people. It gives an insight into the intricacies of hospital management with suitable illustration and case study more than what one could get in a regular course. Readers could find answers to some of the mind boggling questions faced by healthcare sector such as:

• How can hospitals optimise costs and resources through profit centres?
• How can hospitals retain doctors and knowledgeable staff happy on the jobs?
• How can hospitals deal with VIP customers?
• How can hospitals develop technical skills to convince patient’s attendants in case of death?
• How to control costs and yet provide quality care?
• How can hospitals develop leadership style that encourages teamwork?

The second part of the book deals with promoting and commissioning of new hospitals. It reflects current thinking of leading promoters and gives an overview of the future trends in medical profession. The key to success of any hospital vests in patient satisfaction and the scope of this book is to make hospitals fully conversant with this device. The concept has brought about significant improvement in the rate of occupancy and turnover as the country witnesses a shift in patient’s preference for private and voluntary hospitals over government hospitals. Hospitals aspiring to compete for a substantial market share would have to adopt scientific management and marketing techniques. Patients, who were not too long ago, were satisfied with what was given, now desire much more. If a hospital is not able to come up to their expectations, they have no hesitation in trying out another. Hospitals would therefore, have to direct their efforts towards optimum utilisation of resources: man, money, machinery, materials market and matching skills. However, an alignment of these factors does not come automatically with complex factors in the environment. A good sense of coordination between management, staff, consultant and public awareness is pre-requisite for achieving the ultimate goals. The entire organisational strength must focus on attaining the target market.

Questions that hospitals may like to contemplate are:

• How to attract potential customers and retain the present ones?
• How to plan in order to secure future customers for available facilities?
• How to develop a pricing structure and communicate as a user friendly hospital?
• How to differentiate your services so as to create preference in the minds of public?
• How to gear up yourself to face a competitive situation?
• How to get public response that fulfills hospital’s objectives?