Health Care Capacity

Title: A critical analysis of the Sydney Community Hospital organizational structure and its relationship to its mission, vision and strategic goals.


Introduction

Nowadays, with the raising of life expectancy and standards of living, better service quality and facilities are required in health care organizations to cope with the bulky demand of public health care. In order to innovate and keep abreast of time, an organization must possess the knowledge base of understanding why its original structure is becoming outdated towards a changing environment and giving place to an alternative organizational structure. Coincidentally, the purpose of this article is to critically analyze the original structure of a healthcare organization via a case study. Besides, the interaction between the vision, mission, strategic goals and the potential alternative organizational structure will also be further discussed.
The existing hospital structure
In the case study, the Sydney Community Hospital adopts a traditional, functional structure to manage the entire operation of hospital. According to Westphal (2005), this type of structure divides the activities of the hospital into different functional areas. Besides, it follows the centralized structure and hierarchical structure that the authority is developed from the advanced to its lower position in the chain of command (Sullivan & Decker, 2011). This simplified mechanism facilitates unified management and fosters stability and efficiency. Through the efficiency in utilizing of resources and minimizing the duplication of employee and capital, the functional structure reduces the total hospital expenditure in the end. On the other hand, everyone familiarizes with his or her own specialty that is controlled by a distinct line of authority (Sullivan & Decker, 2011). In sum, it is quite an effective way of operation and coordinating with the hospital’s existing vision statement to provide maximum benefits healthcare services...