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| ROLE OF CONSULTANTS IN HEALTHCARE PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT |
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Healthcare has come a long way from the ages when healthcare facilities were primarily associated with death, where sick pilgrims were often cared for in cruciform halls by nuns to the professionally management with clinical specialists and the growing technology.
Health services in India are generally characterized by insufficient planning, uncoordinated operation of their different elements, and adhoc responses to atypical situations. Today, the rate of growth of the technology and clinical techniques has lead to the need of specialized services in establishing and operating healthcare institutions. Consultants play a very important role in converting ambitions into Visions. It has been seen that with the increasing trends toward integrated and comprehensive healthcare networking, planner and management experts are in touch with;
- Characteristics of healthcare establishments
- Facility mix and their level of specialization
- Services availability and their utilization by the communities in both the primary service area and secondary service areas
- Level of Technology, both indigenous and imported, available and required
- Costs factors and probable cost recovery patterns
- Health/Hospital management information systems
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HEALTHCARE PLANNING
Planning a healthcare institution requires expertise from varied fields in developing the structure and providing the correct mix of facilities and services. A critical look at the modern healthcare institutions shows an effort to design structures for ease of operations, maintenance and human comfort.
Healthcare delivery units vary according to the parameters required to fulfil the healthcare needs of the community. There has been a tremendous change in the parameters to be adopted for planning a health care facility as a result of technology advances in medical electronics. These affect the diagnostic and therapeutic modalities, communication, management technology including management tools, and a host of other parameters besides the evolving, newer nursing techniques. These parameters are changing continuously, making the task of healthcare providers all the more difficult in their pursuit of satisfying the needs and aspirations of the community.
The architecture, embraces the and welcomes the inhabitants and visitors, providing a cordial atmosphere which provides a psychological impact on wholistic patient care. To ensure that the short term and the long-term plans are to be taken into consideration, a master plan should be developed to establish major paths of circulation, facility locationing, supportive and administrative areas etc. The overall-planning module would integrate the all the modules. Healthcare architecture requires specializing in a way that it serves our client needs. Hospital promoters of today are aware of the existing degree of expertise in hospital architecture and show an increased interest in humanizing the healthcare environment and an acknowledgement that healthcare buildings are major works of architecture that have impact as buildings, both on the community and those who use them. A planning team for a healthcare institution, would judicially be a blend of people of specialization and design leadership. Firms or combinations of firms that routinely work closely together, that offer successful mix of the required skills, would continue to increase as they would be providing a unique understanding of healthcare and architecture that con be applied interactively during the designing process. In the field of healthcare, where the building costs are significant, planning for the long term is essential. Meeting consumer needs requires a dynamic approach towards healthcare planning
In our professional practice we are normally called in when the promoters have already commenced the project and it is built midway through. The reason maybe myriad - building structure problems, cost overruns, inadequate financing options, design related problems etc. Most of these issues can be better handled if professional inputs are sought from the stage of conceptualization of the project itself. Hospital buildings are not normal building as they have a very high level of technology requirements in terms of air-conditioning, electrical works and back up by UPS/DG sets, and computer technologies like building automation systems, CCTV, access control systems etc. Co-ordination of all services including architectural design is of paramount importance and hiring a good consultant who has knowledge of hospital systems will go a long way in better planning as well as reducing costs on projects.
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HEALTHCARE MANAGEMENT
Healthcare establishments are equally complicated to be managed, as they are being set-up. The traditional approach of hospital management is that the hospitals are owned and run by medical and allied professionals. But the dynamic nature of the medical technology and techniques of treating patients had lead to the need to pool in resources and establish all the allied services in one facility. The healthcare industry today is a network of primary health units providing the basic healthcare requirements, secondary health units providing specialized services and the tertiary care and single speciality facilities. Each of the facilities require to be managed and operated in specified environments which are influenced by factors such as the clients to be serviced, level of care to be provided, philosophy of the management - charitable institution/corporate set-up etc. The main reasons for external expertise for successful operations of the healthcare organisations can be seen at two levels, Firstly establishing a healthcare organisation and secondly managing the operations.
Establishing a healthcare organization requires a detailed understanding of the existing and futuristic healthcare market in the geographical area whereby the organization requires to be set-up. The understanding of the pulse of the healthcare market with respect to level of technology, availability of manpower, disease patterns and the clientele to be served is the foundation for establishing a viable and practically operational organisation. The healthcare market is shared by the public and the private sector to ensure that the services are complement and not supplemented. The detailed work requiring extensive expertise in the following specialized field's epidemiological details, disease patterns, and the administrative and statistical assessments.
Managing the operations with the heterogeneity of the work profile and the required smooth integration of the complete system. This would require expertise, able to understand the cross- functional implications of activities and processes. Some of the important work area for these experts are as enumerated below;
- Establish, monitor, support and advise administration, management, and coordination of all operations
- Establish and monitor short-term and long-term plans
- Assess effectiveness and efficiency of operations and productivity of the organisation
- Ensure that the organisation is operating within the legal and government legislative framework
- Detailed assessments and providing strategic plans for better operations
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| The role of experts has and will play a very important role in the Planning and Managing healthcare infrastructure.
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