LDR-615 Contemporary Organization Evaluation

LDR-615 Contemporary Organization Evaluation

As the demand for quality and cost-effective health care increases, health care organizations must be highly innovative and respond to situations effectively. In this fast-paced industry, organizational change is inevitable. New policies and guidelines, disruptive technologies, and government regulations are typical change triggers. Considering that change outcomes depend on the intervention responses, organizations’ management should understand the change process and how to respond effectively. Currently, health care organizations apply different strategies to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic depending on regulatory guidelines. This paper discusses change response strategies at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC). Focus areas include the organization’s description, change analysis, response strategies, implications, and necessary modifications.

Organization Description and Change

LDR615 Contemporary Organization Evaluation

MUSC is a public medical school in South Carolina whose primary purpose is to optimize human life through its vision of leading health innovation in the lives it touches. MUSC serves as the only comprehensive academic health center in South Carolina (Medical University of South Carolina, n.d.). Its mission is to provide excellence in three pivotal areas that guide its everyday operations- patient care, research, and teaching. By partnering with MUSC Children’s Health, MUSC Health provides advanced care in South Carolina via hospitals, technologies (telehealth) and an extensive network of doctors (Medical University of South Carolina, n.d.). It is a highly rated organization overall as far as public health is organization.

Like many other health care institutions, MUSC was not immune to the institutional changes associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. The organization is still responding to the government’s directive to practice social distancing and intensify COVID-19 screening and testing (Valenta et al., 2020). From an operation viewpoint, most health care organizations were used to physical patient visits pre-COVID. However, due to the need to keep social distance, management challenges, and unpredictability of the pandemic, health care organizations were forced to restructure and reinvent their approaches to care. In line with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), patients with suspected COVID-19 were advised to use virtual visits instead of presenting to an emergency room for testing (Weigel et al., 2020). The government also intervened through new guidelines, further compelling health care organizations to adjust systems and processes.

Degree of Change and Response Strategies

Besides technological disruptions, government guidelines force health care organizations to make significant process and system

LDR-615 Contemporary Organization Evaluation

changes. In terms of distraction, the change has been significant, affecting many practice areas in MUSC. Valenta et al. (2020) noted that MUSC experienced a dramatic decline in ambulatory operations following the government social distancing guidelines. It was also forced to make significant system changes to covert successfully to virtual care as the government directed. MUSC is still adapting as vaccination and other institutional and government-sponsored efforts to control the pandemic intensify.

MUSC has responded to the dynamics created by the change by integrating technology in care. Primarily through telehealth, MUSC has been able to provide care virtually to ensure that patient needs are met while reducing COVID-19 exposure (Valenta et al., 2020). Telehealth has been a valuable tool to enable medical care continuity during a crisis. Its facilitation has been further improved by regulatory agencies loosening some restrictions on telehealth and more payers agreeing to reimburse for COVID-19 (McGhee, 2020). As MUSC continues to make system changes and maximize virtual care outcomes, it also organizes COVID-19 reimbursement as it would for other medical services.