Question

Explain why the following course objectives are important for hospital administrators:

1. Describe how the essential activities of healthcare administration such as workplace safety, compliance plans, strategic planning, risk management, and crisis management influence the success of a healthcare organization.

2. Explain how the use of administrative and clinical technology can enhance healthcare operations.

3. Describe how food operations are handled in the health care industry.

4. Describe how internal and external activities of healthcare operations such as performance improvement, audits and inspections, legal and ethical issues, and healthcare marketing, advertising, and public relations improve healthcare operations overall.

Answer 1

Ans 1. Health administrators are responsible for ensuring the smooth operation of a hospital, hospital system or healthcare organization.

A healthcare administrator must also have an understanding of medical records, and make sure that patients’ medical records are properly maintained. Additionally, this role is responsible for expanding or contracting existing services depending on the current needs of the organization and the community.

Health care administrator often form and approve budgets for the general running of the facility, including equipment purchases, maintenance, and operations. This requires a good knowledge to understand how income is generated, what everything costs, and how to balance the two so the organization stays solvent.

On a day-to-day basis, management of facilities and finances will involve seeking out data (in the form of personal knowledge, documents, and computer files), analyzing that data, and presenting findings to relevant individuals and groups.
Healthcare administrators often take care of hiring; either organizing teams to help fill open positions, or directly hiring staff themselves. Staff schedules must also be created and maintained in order to make sure operations run smoothly. And when conflicts arise, the healthcare administrator may be called on to moderate.
The health care industry is regulated by vast rules and regulations. It’s the job of the healthcare administrator to assist with or manage the process of ensuring an organization remains compliant. This involves keeping up with the latest health care news relevant to the location and type of organization.

Ans 2. In today’s world, technology plays an important role in every industry as well as in our personal lives. Out of all of the industries that technology plays a crucial role in, healthcare is definitely one of the most important. This merger is responsible for improving and saving countless lives all around the world.
Medical technology is a broad field where innovation plays a crucial role in sustaining health. Areas like biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, information technology, the development of medical devices and equipment, and more have all made significant contributions to improving the health of people all around the world. From “small” innovations like adhesive bandages and ankle braces, to larger, more complex technologies like MRI machines, artificial organs, and robotic prosthetic limbs, technology has undoubtedly made an incredible impact on medicine.

In the healthcare industry, the dependence on medical technology cannot be overstated, and as a result of the development of these brilliant innovations, healthcare practitioners can continue to find ways to improve their practice – from better diagnosis, surgical procedures, and improved patient care.
Medical technology has evolved from introducing doctors to new equipment to use inside private practices and hospitals to connecting patients and doctors thousands of miles away through telecommunications. It is not uncommon in today’s world for patients to hold video conferences with physicians to save time and money normally spent on traveling to another geographic location or send health information instantaneously to any specialist or doctor in the world.
Medical technologies like minimally-invasive surgeries, better monitoring systems, and more comfortable scanning equipment are allowing patients to spend less time in recovery and more time enjoying a healthy life.

Ans 3. Food safety in hospitals is of paramount importance, since their patient populations are at higher risk of developing a foodborne illness, especially:

# The elderly
# Infants and young children
# Pregnant women
# Chemotherapy patients

Because age, chronic disease, and medications can compromise the immune system, these patients in particular have a much harder time fighting off pathogens in contaminated foods.

Hospitals typically do a good job of preventing foodborne illness due to four essential protocols:

1.Implementing HACCP and scheduling regular inspections

2. Monitoring and recording food temperaturesC

3. Continuous education for employees

A Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) plan is the best method for putting administrative policies in place that govern food safety procedures and operations along the entire food chain to ensure that only clean, healthy food is served to patients.
Pathogens typically survive and multiply within a set range of temperatures, ensuring that cold foods are kept cold and hot foods are kept hot can literally be a life or death issue. Digital temperature monitoring is standard at most hospitals, and typically occurs at several touchpoints:

Refrigeration temperatures

A food’s final cooking temperature

Temperatures of food before and after service

Temperatures in dishwashing machines

A standardized food safety seminar ought to be part of the orientation for all hospital staff before entering a kitchen or serving patients. Important topics to be covered would include:

1. Hand-washing protocols: one of the most important interventions to reducing infection rates

2.Use of disposal hairnets and gloves during food preparation

3.Reporting colds, flus, and other illnesses before coming to work

4.Proper refrigeration, freezing, thawing, and reheating of foods

5.Basic knowledge of how foodborne illness occurs for different pathogens

6.Familiarity of foods with the highest propensity for contamination (e.g., raw foods, unpasteurized foods, eggs, luncheon meats)

7.Awareness of foods with high allergy profiles (e.g., nuts, shellfish, soy, dairy)

Ans 4. Auditing is an essential part of the process of obtaining a certificate, while other reasons can include:

• Evaluation of the management system or prioritization of management actions.
• Objectives of commercial nature.
• Evaluation of suppliers or fulfillment of customer requirements.
• Evaluation of incidents occurring at other facilities/organizations.
• Regulatory or contractual requirements