SWOT Analysis: South Queens Community Health Center - Essay Example

SWOT Analysis: South Queens Community Health Center Health is wealth as the famous cliché goes but with a dwindling economy how is health delivered in the suburbs of the big cities in America? The battle on health care reform has left the commerce industry to choose on whether to offer health insurance to its employees or just increase their wages and pay the dictated fines for not offering the coverage (Mcintosh). According to the July 2011 report of the US Department of Labor, there are over 756 thousand unemployed individuals in New York. For the unemployed, the primary concern is food security for every table. Health then is left to a number of health care providers that can offer appropriate and standard services at a minimum cost. This paper seeks to analyze how a local government supported community based clinic such as the South Queens Community Health Center manages its health services in a multi-cultural neighborhood and what could possibly be done to improve it. Queens Medical Center is a state-of-the-art medical facility located at 82-68 164th Street Jamaica, New York with 279 (Queens Hospital 2010 statistics) beds giving various health services from Cardiology, Dentistry, Geriatrics/Senior Care, Medicine, Ophthalmology, Pediatric Specialties, Radiology, Surgery, Urology and Victim Services. In response to growing demands on community based health services, the Queens Hospital built three affiliate medical centers wherein one of which is the South Queens Community Health Center. 1. Internal Analysis The role of a community based center is crucial in the continuous delivery of health services and promotion of a health seeking behavior to the people. In the case of South Queens Community Health Center, much is expected and social responsibility is enormous as it serves a community with over 2.2 M population of multi-cultural ethnicity belonging to white American, Black, Asian/Pacific Islander, and Hispanic (Dept. of Health 2008 Health Indicator). In health service delivery, availability pertains to multiple factors that ensure convenience of the clients. Availability could be about the schedules, clinic hours, or visiting hours. It could also be the kinds of services offered by the health institution, the staffing, the medical equipment and supplies, or the route and transportation to the health vicinity. In the case of South Queens Community Health Center, availability has been evaluated in all factors presented above. In 2008, Queens ranked 3rd among the boroughs in New York City with high pregnancy rate aged 15-44 (Dept. of Health. Table 30). Since it was established, the health center provides teens and woman’s services on GYN/OB, prenatal care, WIC, pediatrics, breast clinic, reproductive care practices and safe sex care practices such as abstinence counseling, family planning/birth control, pregnancy testing, STD (sexually transmitted diseases) screening and treatment, adolescent medicine, physicals, HIV/AIDS education and testing, mental health services, and social work services. In response to the variety of cultural ethnicity in the area, the health center has a language bank to assist patients who speak languages other than English. It also welcomes patients from different gender orientation and even undocumented immigrants in need of medical care. All patient cases are treated with one on one connection with the staff and cases are treated with confidentiality. The health center is operating on various schedules. During Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays clinic hours are from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm. Tuesdays are from 11:00 am to 7:00 pm while Fridays are from 12:00 noon to 5:00 pm. This schedule has enabled the health professionals to conduct services to the patients with diverse schedules as well most specially to the groups with confidential cases in HIV and STDs. In terms of data management, the health center is well provided with software that allows electronic storage of patient data and other pertinent medical records for optimum data care and performance. This has aided the physicians and staff in securing and retrieving data on medication history, formulary and benefits, and eligibility of transactions. The first-rate and respectable service of the health center is credited from the support of Queens Medical Center. The dependable image of the health center and skills of the health providers has resulted to positive feedback from patients. However, long queue of patients waiting time can be observed due to lack of medical practitioners and clinic staff. To resolve the problem, the health providers were obliged to do multitasking just to cater to the daily influx of patients in the center. The health workers in the health center are keen at their work but exhaustion takes its toll. The extension of roles has led to procrastination of some equally important task and leaves the provider weary from work. The health center offers assistance to patients in obtaining health insurances; this service has enhanced the image of the health center to the general public. However, it also amplified the number of patients waiting to be served leading aggravating the problem on lack of personnel and performing multi-task. 2. External Analysis The affiliation of South Queens Community Health Center to Queens Medical Center has benefited the former in its financing. Conversely, budget cuts on health care from the state have also affected the operations of the health center as seen in the lack of other equipment needed to perform its services like X-ray and medical supplies, and extension on dental services which is needed in the community. The “state spending on health care will be reduced by approximately $2.8 billion” (Guelpa) when the health reform will kick in. This would mean lesser budget appropriation for the community based clinic to support its human resources and daily operations. In addition, the forthcoming closure of the Peninsula Hospital Center on September this year (CBS New York) will lead to increase in the volume of patients needing healthcare. This will further exacerbate the long waiting lines in the clinic as more and more people will seek healthcare to other facilities in the neighborhood. Furthermore, the presence of other health clinics and hospitals in the area can bring two pronged results, aid in the accommodating patients and less income for the South Queens Community Health Center. The other health providers become a threat to the health center when the registered patients with follow-up procedures or requiring multiple month treatment decides to transfer to them. Lesser patients in the health center leads to lesser income, lesser income leads to loss in return of investment, loss in return of investment leads to decline in value of services, and decline in value of services leads to closure. Another predicament of the health center is the patients without health insurance. Since community service is one of the core values of South Queens Community Health Center, it necessitates the health staff to accept patients even to those with difficulty affording health services. Although the health center provides a sliding scale paying scheme that allows the patient to pay the cost at the agreed time and reduced charges, still it affects the cash flow and monthly fund balance of the institution. 3. Action Steps In the field of health and medicine, profession is tantamount to skills. Not all tasks can be assigned to a health provider without appropriate training for the new responsibilities as minimal error can lead to disease progression and worse patient fatality. The survival and development of an organization largely depends two factors: leadership and financial management. Financial management is a practice that entails planning, controlling, organizing, and monitoring of resources to enable the organization to achieve its goals (Villanueva). In the case of South Queens Community Health Center, there is a need to manage its scarce resources strategically and manage funds based on plan-do-review financial management process. Because of the decrease in funding support from the state government, the health center should be able to develop a scheme to sustain its operations and continue delivering appropriate health services. One strategy to be considered is the conduct of resource mobilization for the health center. The resource mobilization projects can either be directed funds (donation of medical supplies and equipment, medicines, sponsoring underprivileged patient treatment) or indirect funds (cash donations for any purpose in the daily operations of the health center). Since resource mobilization is a huge responsibility entailing individuals to dedicate ample time to plan and conduct the activities, the second strategy which is expansion of network/partnership emanates. Networking or expansion of partnership aside from Queens Health Network and NYC Health and Hospitals Corporation can be beneficial to the health center. Networking is a part of resource mobilization to support the prevailing needs of the health center which are lack of human resources and lack of finances. The health center should embark into partnerships with both health and non-health institutions. Partnership with health institutions is more for assistance in delivering health services such as patient referral and volunteer assistance, while partnership with non-health institutions can be for other resources such as monetary donations and even volunteer assistance as well. The above strategies however cannot be implemented unless the South Queens Community Health Center is granted autonomy to conduct it. Currently, the health centers’ affiliation with Queens Medical Center has contributed to its weaknesses in terms of pooling volunteers. Medical and non-medical professionals who desired to volunteer have to apply to Queens Medical Center for interview, screening and briefing before they are assigned to the community centers. While all these procedures are being undertaken, the health center has to wait for the much needed personnel reinforcement. The call for autonomy in the aspect of resource mobilization and networking could contribute to the sustainability of the health center in delivering its service to the neighborhood. It can save waiting time, ease the problem on lack of personnel, and even improve its daily services. When the health center is granted autonomy for the aforementioned strategies, its current weaknesses and threats will be solved directly, more efficiently, and timely by those who experienced the problems first hand. As mentioned earlier, the other factor needed for the survival and development of an organization is leadership. The realization of the suggested action steps above is dependent on the leadership within the South Queens Community Health Center. The realm of responsibility in the health center needed a dialectic leader who can steer the staff to work with commitment and engender solutions to the pressing problems at the workplace. The current center director as the leader must take a pro-active step to further the development plans for center and its staff. As much as the suggested recommendations sound enormous and demanding, there is no other way to counter the weaknesses and threats in the health center but to strengthen its own system and develop self-reliance. Such strategies are not new and have been proven effective by other institutions not just in the health sector. These recommendations however will not work if it will just be handed over on a piece of report. Implementing a genuine and effective organizational change requires a participatory process within the organization. The analysis and recommendations in the previous pages were done by interviewing some of the health personnel, and personal experiences and insights of the author. To accomplish it though, the necessary step would be to validate the data to the entire health center personnel during staff meeting and to do it inconspicuously to prevent misunderstanding within. The validation activity then would be the venue for a participatory evaluation of the health clinic as one institution. That way, there is ownership in the result of the organizational analysis as well as in the accomplishment of the recommended solutions. The annual health survey of New York City showed that “an estimated 410,000 adults in Queens reported they did not have a regular health care provider” (Dept. of Health. Queens Healthcare Profile 11). This survey is just another proof how important it is for South Queens Community Health Center to establish itself and its significant role in providing quality healthcare services to the community. Works Cited About Queens Hospital Center. Queens Hospital Center. Web. 24 Aug. 2011. Department of Health. “Table 30: Total Pregnancies and Teenage Pregnancies by Type and Resident County New York State – 2008.” Web. 25 Aug. 2011. ---. “Queens County Health Indicators by Race/Ethnicity, 2006-2008.” Web.25 Aug. 2011. -----. “Queens Healthcare Profile.” Web. 25 Aug. 2011. Department of Labor. “Table 3. Civilian labor force and unemployment by state and selected area, seasonally adjusted.” Regional and State Employment and Unemployment (Monthly) News Release. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Web. 25 Aug. 2011. Guelpa, Philip. “New York state budget slashes education, health care and taxes on the rich”. World Socialist Web Site. 12 April 2011. Web. 25 Aug. 2011. Mckintosh, Marie. “When Health Care Reform Kicks In, Will Your Employer Stop Offering Insurance?” The Bay Citizen. Web. 25 Aug. 2011. “Lawmakers, Community Leaders Oppose Closure Of Hospital In Queens.” CBS New York.com. August 7, 2011. Web. 25 Aug 2011.< http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2011/08/07/lawmakers- community-leaders-oppose-closure-of-hospital-in-queens/> “(Q.H.C.) Adult and Teenage Program”. Resource Guide: South Queens Community Health Center. New York Alliance Against Sexual Assault. Web. 24 Aug. 2011. New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation. Web. 24 Aug. 2011. The Purdue OWL Family of Sites. The Writing Lab and OWL at Purdue and Purdue U, 2008. Web. 24 Aug. 2011. Read More