Question

The latest trend in health care is the merging of hospitals to improve efficiency and quality of care for the patient.

When institutions merge so do departments to eliminate redundant services.

As the manger of the lab, design an efficient laboratory operation to provide services at both institutions.

Answer 1

Eliminate redundant services

After a string of Merger/acquisitions/partnerships /strategic alliances, many large healthcare systems start having significant redundancies in service lines, staff, equipment, laboratory and other assets. Say for example some organizations have multiple service lines in facilities that are just a few miles apart and have the same function. The challenge is to combine these assets in the most efficient manner possible — and eliminate overlapping resources and services and reduce cost.

For example, after merging an organization may have the same laboratory operation( say a diagnostic center) in multiple labs of the same town/city. This will lead to redundant service. What a manager can do is to combine all those labs into a single big one with a more advanced facility in the same operating cost. This way the organization will be able to reduce it operating cost