Coordination & Communication Within Health Care Organization
Coordination And Communication Within Health Care Organization
Health Care Organization is unique and complex entity consisting of groups of specialized people with specific purpose in the set of rules, policies, procedures, relationships and culture. It is highly diverse organization consisting of people from different functionality, in management side includes human resources, finance and accounting, information systems, maintenance housekeeping; in clinical side includes physicians specialized in different departments of medicines, nurses, laboratory technicians and the list continues. Expertise in each department ranges from new to highly proficient. There is no room for a mistake in health care organization as they deal with life and death. It is very sophisticated, having very little tolerance with error, requires a very close net and efficiency between departments which has to be characterized by high level co-ordination and communication. In fact, communication can be considered a co-ordination device (Dietz, 2002).
Coordination is the act of making different people or things work together for a goal or effect. It deals with the interdependencies by effectively linking together the various parts of organization or by linking two or more organizations to pursue a common objective (Malone & Crowston, 1994). Many researches were conducted regarding effect of coordination in health organization. The results indicate that it plays an important role in performance and efficiency of health care organization. More recent studies of health care delivery settings also indicate that effective coordination of staff leads to better clinical outcomes (Gittell et all., 2000; Yougn et al., 1997; Young et al., 1998). The logic behind coordination is the presence of dependencies between departments and their activities. And the goal of coordination is to manage these dependencies in such a way that the activities become part of the organization’s objective (Holt, 1998).
Health Care Organization is unique and complex entity consisting of groups of specialized people with specific purpose in the set of rules, policies, procedures, relationships and culture. It is highly diverse organization consisting of people from different functionality, in management side includes human resources, finance and accounting, information systems, maintenance housekeeping; in clinical side includes physicians specialized in different departments of medicines, nurses, laboratory technicians and the list continues. Expertise in each department ranges from new to highly proficient. There is no room for a mistake in health care organization as they deal with life and death. It is very sophisticated, having very little tolerance with error, requires a very close net and efficiency between departments which has to be characterized by high level co-ordination and communication. In fact, communication can be considered a co-ordination device (Dietz, 2002).
Coordination is the act of making different people or things work together for a goal or effect. It deals with the interdependencies by effectively linking together the various parts of organization or by linking two or more organizations to pursue a common objective (Malone & Crowston, 1994). Many researches were conducted regarding effect of coordination in health organization. The results indicate that it plays an important role in performance and efficiency of health care organization. More recent studies of health care delivery settings also indicate that effective coordination of staff leads to better clinical outcomes (Gittell et all., 2000; Yougn et al., 1997; Young et al., 1998). The logic behind coordination is the presence of dependencies between departments and their activities. And the goal of coordination is to manage these dependencies in such a way that the activities become part of the organization’s objective (Holt, 1998).
Bibliography: Stephen M. Shortell, Arnold D. Kaluzny (2006, 5th Edition), Health Care Management – Organizaiton Design and Behavior, United States, Thomsan Delmar Learning Michael R Journals Anne-Sophie Nyssen (2006), Coordination in hospitals organized or emergent process, Cognition, Technology & Work, Volume 9, 149 – 154 Vivian Vimarlund, Cecilia Sjöberg and Toomas Timpka (2003), A Theory for Classification of Health Care Organizations in the New Economy, Volume 27, Number 5 / October, 2003, 465-473 M Berkowitz, Kenneth S; Checkley, Joseph R (2000), Blueprint for success, Managed Healthcare Executive, Volume: 10, 4, Page 27 Websites