Organisational Structure Of Sydney Community Hospital

Advantages and Disadvantages of current Organisational Structure of Sydney Community Hospital

Describe about the Organisational Structure of Sydney Community Hospital?

Organisational structure plays a vital role in determining success of an organisation. By definition, organisational structure refers to the process how activities such as task allocation, supervision and coordination help to achieve aims of the organisation (Ackroyd, 2007). An organisation may be structured in many ways depending upon its goals (Ackroyd, 2007). Some common forms of organisational structure are pre-bureaucratic, post-bureaucratic, bureaucratic etc. This essay aims at critically evaluating the structure of Sydney Community Hospital and its relationship to the stated mission, vision and strategic goals of this organisation. The essay will tend to examine the type of organisational structure suitable for Sydney Community Hospital in order to achieve its organisational goals and achieve stated mission and strategies. The organisation being assessed in this essay is Sydney Community Hospital. In general, it a community hospital with 110 beds arrangements and situated in outer suburbs of Sydney. The hospital has provided general acute medical, emergency, surgical services. 

In general, health care organisations suffer from immense pressure and changes. Hence, developing an understanding of the health care theory is always helpful for healthcare professionals to understand the requirements of modern health care systems. As per Madden, organisational strategy refers to what an organisation plans to do and how it plans to do it. The organisational strategy is heavily influenced by the strategy, mission and vision of the healthcare system. On the other hand, Organisational structure is often concerned with the relationships between groups of people to organisation (Jones, 2000). However, organisational structure is also related to design, which means, designing or organising a structure which facilitates effective communication, innovation and recognition of value and growth (Koop, 2007). Most often, structure of an organisation is a reflection of the culture of that company or organisation. In last few years, the population of outer suburbs area has been increased significantly. The population includes most small families and retirement villages with nursing homes. Considering its structure, the hospital is no longer able to provide effective health care services to people and as a whole, community. The key reason for such a condition of Sydney Community Hospital is the poor organisational structure possessed by community hospital. As of now, the hospital has traditional, ineffective functional organisational structure. The poor organisational structure is impacting the performance of the community hospital and hence, the hospital is no more able to meet the needs of the people and community.

The current organisational structure at Sydney Community Hospital is backed with numerous advantages and disadvantages for the recent health care environment and changing health care needs of the organisation. The current organisational structure of Sydney Community Hospital can accommodate only 110 patients. This is because the hospital offers only 110- bed facility. The health care services offered by Sydney Community Hospital include emergency, acute, surgical services. Although there are many other hospitals in the area with 110 bed-facility but Sydney Community Hospital lacks vision and a framework to cope up with dynamic needs of the patients. This is one of the limitations for current organisational structure at Sydney Community Hospital. Further, the hospital has been providing same medical services to people since last 15 years. There is no improvement in the service delivery of Sydney Community Hospital due to which the hospital is not able to deal with the changing needs (Madden, 2006). A lot of things in Sydney have changed due to which no improvement is seen as a negative factor hindering the growth of hospital. The equipment and tools used in Sydney Community Hospital are outdated, old and obsolete. Hence, larger part of population are now complaining about the service delivery system at Sydney Community Hospital and demanding modern technologies and equipment to be adopted for health care services. Besides this, doctors and nurses at Sydney Community Hospital have mastered the strategies and ways being used for long period of time (Marquis, 2012). This is one of the advantages for Sydney Community Hospital. However, the management at Sydney Community Hospital is considering restructuring the organisational structure and also using existing strategies for more productivity.

An Alternative Organisational Structure

For Sydney Community Hospital, an organisational structure catering to the changing needs of the population is Sydney is ideal. Since the current organisational structure is not able to meet the needs of the patient so organisational restructure is required. The current organisational structure doesn’t allocate the responsibilities among SCH’s staff wisely due to which the service delivery lacks efficiency. In order to achieve the organisational mission and vision, it is crucial to break the employees of the SCH into specific sections. This will encourage harmonious adjustment between each other. With this, comprehensive quality of care can be given to specific group of patients. This will enable the health care professionals at SCH to provide quality services to patients.

The strategies, decisions and effectiveness of an organisation depend on three key things; Vision, Mission and Core Values (Schafermeyer, 2003). Vision refers to what an organisation wants to become in future. Mission often refers to the purpose of existence of an organisation (Miller, 2009). It is generally in form of a short statement with a concise description of what an organisation wants, how it is operating and its future prospects (Sullivan, 2010). Core Values refers to the strategies and decision taken by an organisation to achieve its vision and mission (Sullivan, 2010). In case of Sydney Community Hospital, organisational structure is one of the constraints for SCH which makes it difficult for the hospital staff to meet the needs of the people. Hence, the hospital management requires looking for ways and strategies that can help increase their productivity and efficiency. One of the ways is by hiring skilled personnel and providing treatment at reasonable rates. The SCH can adopt management team approach in order to cater to the growing needs of people in Sydney. Management team approach refers to the approach where there is no boss and all members function as a team. With this, members can share ideas and work out for strategies that improve the service delivery of the hospital (Sullivan, 2010). This is much better than having a single leader and putting all pressure on him to identify strategies and ways for efficient service delivery at Sydney Community Hospital.

The recent organisational structure at Sydney Community Hospital is poor and traditional. It is, no more, able to cater to the health care needs of the community. Hence, a new organisational structure is needed at Sydney Community Hospital to ensure health care is given at rapid pace and more and more patients are satisfied. One of the advantages of new organisational structure for Sydney Community Hospital is that by allocating the responsibilities to staff, the personnel will be able to know their specific duties and perform them with utmost efficiency. With the new organisational structure, there can be changes such as doubling the bed-facility. The previous structure offered 110 beds which were not sufficient to treat large part of population. Hence, the new structure proposes 200 bed-facilities at Sydney Community Hospital. Second advantage of new organisational structure for Sydney Community Hospital is diversification of services (Westphal, 2005). The old organisational structure offers treatment for some diseases only but as the epidemiology has diversified so the new organisational structure proposes treatment for more diseases by hiring highly-skilled personnel. The new organisational structure proposes ways that are in-line with the vision, mission and core values of Sydney Community Hospital. However, since the organisational structure new, there might be some problems faced by hospital staff while adopting it. This is because they have already mastered the old strategies and ways. Hence, this can be one of the disadvantages for new organisational structure (Zuckerman, 2004).

Conclusion

Since organisational structure puts great impact of the ability of the staff to perform their duties, it is required the structure must be such that it makes the personnel efficient in the service delivery. In case of Sydney Community Hospital, traditional and poor organisational structure is one of the constraints. But this can be effectively be managed by adopting new organisational structure which is in-line with the vision, mission and core-values of the hospital. In general, having constraint in service delivery is often an excuse to innovate look for other ways. The personnel at Sydney Community Hospital need to focus on new strategies, ways and keep up-to-date with latest trends of nursing.

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