Three Big Ideas

Three Big Ideas

The business of healthcare is a rapidly growing field. With new technology, prolonged life expectancy, higher expectations, increased access to care, etc. there is a continuous need to improve performance at every level. Of all the many areas of possible opportunities to improve performance of a healthcare organization we will dive into three of these idea concepts. For each idea we will define and discuss the overall concept, the expected benefits it will have on the current healthcare system, as well as challenges in implementation and creative success factors. The three ideas will include the use of outsourcing, the use of internet, and total quality management.

Outsourcing

The knee jerk reaction to the concept of outsourcing, in my experience, has always been negative. Most lay persons generally think of outsourcing as a way to send tasks “overseas” in an effort to cut corners and improve finances not caring about the quality. While this may be true in a small percentage of businesses this is not a true definition of outsourcing.

Outsourcing is defined as the contracting of a business process to a third-party. Outsourcing includes both foreign and domestic contracting. In general a benefit of outsourcing is in-fact financial savings from lower international labor rates. This is noted but is not the only positive component to outsourcing. Ideally a contractual agreement to outsourcing a service would allow an organization to focus time and resources on their core competencies by having the third party handle smaller or unskilled tasks. This offers a great amount of budget flexibility and control by only having to pay for services they need, and only at times in which they are needed. This omits the needs to hire and train specialized staff and cost to train those (Wee, 2010).

Besides these main obvious reasons, there are numerous other core reasons for a business to outsource. As mentioned outsourcing allows a company to focus on...