Critical Decision Making for Providers: Physical Therapist

Critical Decision Making for Providers
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September 4, 2016
Your Institution of Affiliation
Introduction
It is said that “hospital administrations in the United States spend an excess of $12 billion dollars per year because of communication inefficiencies” (Balcanoff, 2013). These excess expenditures come from a number of reasons but are mostly results of ineffective information dissemination, such as litigations (medical malpractices, negligence lawsuits, consent litigation, etc.), hospital damages, and insurance failure. However, upon closer look research has found out that this amount can significantly be lowered through the use of “effective communication” (Balcanoff, 2013). In a study that they did, Balcanoff (2013) used Systems theory (which focuses on the individual parts and their relationship that makes up a system) to find out how better and efficient communication between hospital units affect the overall performance of the organization and the quality of its services. They found out that “better communication increases positive patient outcomes” thus, leading to increased service satisfaction (quality metric). On the other hand, poor communication leads to inefficiency and an increase in the workload of all the hospital departments. From this, the author strongly believes that this characteristic (strong and effective communication skill) is the most important thing that hospital administrators “should have”. Furthermore, the author believe that - since a hospital administrator is not only in charge of the contingent “end-to-end” (business) processes of the hospital, but also the oversight of the “delivery of care” (HealthcareBusiness&Technology.com, 2016) - he must also encourage every member of the organization to develop effective communication skills. In the scenario provided in the Allied Health Community (sub-section: Critical Decision Making for Providers) page, one can see how a simple miscommunication can affect the whole organization. The succeeding chapters provide a better view of this scenario.
Scenario
In the Allied Health Community page, the scenario portrays Mike, the lab technician, caught in a dilemma where he has to make a decision to report a “liquid spill” on the floor and wait for housekeeping to arrive and clean the mess. By reporting it, Mike has to keep watch until housekeeping arrives (in about 3-5 minutes) in order to make sure that no one accidentally slips on it. However, there’s a catch. Since Mike has always been late, he was already given a warning that he shouldn’t be late again, else he might face possible termination. Following from this, Mike has two choices; (1) report the problem, wait for housekeeping and be late, and (2) ignore the problem since there would surely be other people who would take care of it, and clock in already. In the first situation, Mike called his supervisor and housekeeping. His supervisor thanked him for reporting and asked him if he can just make up for the time by t...