Clinical Governance: The Key to Successful Hospital Management

Hospital Management Specialization and Its Importance in Healthcare Institutions

Hospital management is considered one of the administrative sciences that focuses on organizing and managing healthcare institutions, such as public and private health units, hospitals, medical centers, and other healthcare facilities. Hospital management is also considered a modern and developed specialization that has recently appeared in colleges, universities, and higher administrative institutes.

The aim of hospital management is to ensure that the healthcare institution manager has full knowledge of human resource management and the ability to provide all medical needs and services to ensure patient comfort. It also helps people understand that many problems related to healthcare institutions and organizations depend greatly on hospital management.

Clinical Governance: The Key to Successful Hospital Management

Clinical governance is an administrative system that focuses on the continuous improvement of medical services and providing the best healthcare for patients. Clinical governance includes several pillars, such as:

Regular Review of Clinical Practices

Regular review of clinical practices is one of the most important pillars of clinical governance. Medical staff who deal with patients, including doctors, nurses, and pharmacists, are committed to it. Doctors must also focus when repeating examinations and ensure their accuracy after applying improvements, while all healthcare providers must make sound decisions if any shortcomings appear in reviewing practices.

Risk Management

It is widely known that hospitals, especially public hospitals, can be a source of risks, as they may be exposed to infections, different viruses, and biological hazards. Therefore, risk management works to reduce patients’ and hospital workers’ exposure to these risks.

Because of the seriousness of these risks, there must be administrators directly responsible for managing them and ensuring that the areas where patients and workers are present are free from any hazards.

Annual Evaluation of Everyone Working in the Hospital

Hospital management must apply the culture of clinical governance, especially during the annual evaluation of doctors, because it is an important step toward providing better healthcare services for both patients and medical staff.

The annual evaluation includes several references, such as continuing professional education, educational and research activity, patient complaints, letters of thanks and appreciation for doctors, and clinical audit reports.

Duties and Responsibilities of a Hospital Manager

Hospital management has gained great attention around the world. Some countries have provided trained and qualified administrators to manage hospitals and deal with medical staff, including doctors, nurses, and pharmacists. This has increased competition between hospitals and improved efficiency and quality, which has raised the importance and spread of this profession internationally. Some reasons include the higher salary received by hospital managers, gaining important experience, and increasing opportunities for career development.

The hospital manager is also considered the official representative of the administration and performs many different tasks related to the hospital’s work and activities. These tasks include the following:

1. Although there is no direct interaction between the hospital manager and patients, the manager stays in constant communication with medical staff to check on patient conditions and focuses on different policies that improve patient care and health services.
2. The hospital manager works to achieve effective strategic goals and supervises medical staff to ensure efficiency, service quality, and the proper delivery of required healthcare.
3. The hospital manager focuses on the overall image of the institution by setting the best service standards and identifying the necessary changes.
4. The hospital manager must be flexible in dealing with emergency changes and modern technology, remove barriers between management and staff, and encourage good communication and cooperation among them.
5. The hospital manager prepares the budget, provides the necessary funding and materials for the hospital, and supervises the work schedules of all medical staff.
6. The hospital manager makes critical and decisive decisions correctly and solves all problems regardless of the level of pressure.

There are also some skills that a hospital manager needs in order to become successful, including:

Skills of a Successful Hospital Manager

Critical Thinking Skills

Master’s degree programs in healthcare management provide hospital managers with the analytical skills they need in order to follow work policies and make sound decisions after finding suitable solutions.

Relationship Building

A hospital manager must build strong relationships and cooperate with the work team, including doctors, the hospital board of directors, and nursing staff. The manager must also be able to communicate effectively with employees to maintain the organization’s management and build trust among the entire team, which reflects successful hospital management.

Quick Thinking

One of the skills of a successful organization manager is the ability to think quickly when making critical decisions, while being able to accept responsibility for the success or failure of these decisions.

Leadership

The hospital manager is the executive official responsible for all decisions made inside the organization. Therefore, leadership skills include appointing suitable staff, including doctors, members of the hospital board, and others, as well as motivating these teams and finding the best solutions to any problem that may arise in the organization.

Ethical Judgment

In order for a healthcare organization to make sound ethical decisions, hospital managers must have strong moral values to ensure proper decisions are made at the right time. For this reason, the Department of Health Administration at the University of Scranton provided the Jesuit values program to prepare master’s graduates to make ethical decisions in the medical field.

Tips for Hospital Management

There are some practical tips that lead to successful hospital management. These tips come from many years of experience in the medical field, not from one or two days.

Focus on Patients

The main way to determine whether hospital management is successful or not is through patient feedback. Therefore, patients and all their details must be the top priority for hospital management. All medical staff must also treat patients well.

Hire Carefully

Hospital management must hire the right people who can provide the best service. It is preferable for the hiring stage to take more time and effort because the employees of any institution represent it.

Train Hospital Staff Continuously

Hospital management must encourage new employees to receive continuous training in administration and technology in order to improve their skills and perform their work in the best possible way. It is preferable for training to take place in the same hospital where the trainee will work.

Practical Management Is the Key

A hospital manager must remain calm and wise when making certain decisions related to budget schedules or service capacity management, so that everyone can work calmly without pressure or confusion.

Use Advanced Technology

Modern hospital management uses telemedicine, digital imaging, and cloud image storage to increase work efficiency. Some hospital administrations have also created professional networks to communicate with one another in order to access new treatment methods or technologies.

Follow Up on Work

All hospital workers must be disciplined and committed to work rules. The credibility of hospital management appears through the service provided to patients every day, so all workers in the medical field must provide all health services to patients.

Develop an Effective Communication Strategy

Good communication is one of the most effective factors in building hospitals. It also helps achieve understanding and support for the hospital, in addition to building strong relationships from the beginning.