Q

Assignment on Stakeholders: Identifying and Cultivating Alliances-focusing on the Quest Diagnostics Lab, a healthcare

Home, - Stakeholders: Identifying and Cultivating Alliances

Stakeholders: Identifying and Cultivating Alliances

Introduction to the healthcare sector 

Healthcare sector in Australia is a mixture of both public and private healthcare providers. However, the majority of the healthcare is provided publically. The public healthcare system is subsidised and available for all the permanent residents of Australia. This is a huge industry of Australia which accounts for the 12.6 per cent of the working population as per the government reports 2011 which has increased in the recent years. This sector of Australia is, therefore, a huge contributor to the country's GDP. There is Medicare benefits schedule that the government of Australia provides to its citizens and there is also a pharmaceutical benefits system, which helps the citizens availing healthcare (Pehlken et al. 2016). The primary healthcare system is subsidised for elderly care as well. The government also funds a lot of medical research. For the development and growth of any sector, stakeholders plan an important role. Both internal and external stakeholders have a contribution to the growth of the healthcare sector of Australia. In this study, the study will be focusing on the Quest Diagnostics Lab a healthcare organisation. In the following section key stakeholders of this organisation, both internal and external will be discussed.          

Key internal stakeholders 

Internal stakeholders of Quest diagnostic lab refers to the people who are responsible for serving the organisation. Following are the internal stakeholders of the Quest Diagnostic Lab:

Board member: board members are chief stakeholders of the organisation. The board members of the Quest Diagnostic ensure that the service provided to them are up to the standard. Good corporate governance is also possible if the Board members are active and meets their meets their roles and respond effectively (Xia et al. 2018).  

Staff member: Staffs members are an important stakeholder of this organisation. Quest Diagnostic Lab has physicians, lab technicians, nurses and other staffs which are all internal stakeholders. They ensure that the care users of this organisation are receiving quality care. In addition to this, they also help in controlling the cost of the organisation.      

Administration: Administration of the organisation is also an important stakeholder. For Quest Diagnostic Lab, the administration of the organisation has to ensure that the rules and legislation are being maintained (Baucom et al. 2017). Quality service is being provided are not is also under the responsibility of the administration. In addition to the quality maintenance, the administration of the staff’s maintenance is also their responsibility.  

Key external stakeholders

Government: Government bodies are key external stakeholders of the Quest Diagnostic Lab. this organisation has to ensure that they are obeying all the relevant legislation related to their organisation's operations. The safety-related legislations are also formed by the government to ensure that the staffs are maintained. Being a diagnostic lad they specifically have to ensure that the hygiene of the organisation is also maintained as per the government regulations. Legislations like Health and other services Act 1995, Health Insurance Act 1991, Aged Care Act 1997 are relevant for the Quest Diagnostic Lab and have to be followed adequately for quality healthcare services (Legislation.gov.au, 2018).   

Service users: Service users are very important stakeholders; therefore, Quest Diagnostics has to ensure that their needs are fulfilled. Otherwise, they will lose potential target market. 

Quality assessors: Australian Commission on safety and quality in healthcare is one of the chief qualities of the assessors of healthcare organisations in Australia (Gaglioti et al. 2016).   

Strategies for developing a relationship with internal and external stakeholder 

Collaboration: The first strategy for building a relationship between the internal and external stakeholders is collaboration. Collaboration in the task is very important it helps the internal stakeholders like staffs of the organisation to meet the needs of the external stakeholders like service users effectively. 

Building awareness: Building awareness is also another key strategy that will help the stakeholders become aware of their responsibility and fulfil them adequately (Assunta & Jirathanapiwat, 2014). 

Communication: the last strategy is definitely increasing communication with the internal and external stakeholders. Increased communication between the internal and external organisation is also very important for the organisation’s development (Berardi et al. 2015). 

metrics or strategies should you use to determine which stakeholders are most useful to engage with? 

Following are the strategies that will be followed to identify the usefulness of the stakeholder engagement:

Communicate: The first strategy is to communicate effectively. There are various ways to communicate like taking feedbacks, surveys from the staffs and service users. There is also interview and group forums that help in obtaining the perspective of the stakeholders effectively and this ensure that the message is conveyed adequately (Kidd et al. 2016).    

Planning: Careful planning in the stakeholder's engagement is very important it helps in ensuring that the needs of the service users are maintained as well the staffs are satisfied as well. 

Relationship: Building good relationship is very important as well, therefore, appropriate activities should be arranged. 

Consultation: Consultation is also essential and it helps in identifying any gap in the relationship and how to overcome these issues effectively. 

What strategies are most effective when interacting with stakeholders?

Stakeholder mapping: Stakeholder mapping is a very important and effective way to increase stakeholder engagement (Ruoso et al. 2015). This will investigate that the internal stakeholder properly so that Quest Diagnostics can identify their required for the organisation.

Influencing and motivation: the internal stakeholders can be motivated and modified which ensure that they are able to interact with the external stakeholders effectively. On the other hand, there are also external stakeholders who can be influenced as well which will impact the growth of the organisation. 

 

Should self-awareness encourage you to alter your behaviour to accommodate external pressures, or should it empower you to become steadfast in your identity? 

Self-awareness is very important for healthcare professionals and it ensures that they are able to deal with any external issues effectively by adapting to the situation instantly. Individual professional has to be well aware of the rules and regulations of the healthcare organisation so in case of any external problem from the regulatory bodies the professionals are able to handle it effectively (Marinus et al. 2016). The behavioural changes are also an integrated part in this. If the professional has to change their behavioural approach to deal with different types of service users effectively.   

If people are likely to be biased or unfair in their assessment of you, how can you trust others to provide helpful criticism?

Constructive criticism is very helpful in improving the performance however if the assessment is biased or unfair it may have some negative effect. Therefore it is important to assess own performance honestly to ensures that an individual is well aware of their faults and restrictions. This will ensure that the criticism they are addressed not fair they will be able to judge it instantly. Self-evaluation is done honestly will help the individual in professional development. However, there is still a fair chance of self-bias as well, therefore, analysing the self-performance has to be done adequately as well. In addition to this, comparing the self-perspective with the other perspective is also an effective way to judge if the criticism is biased or not (Caputo et al. 2016). Therefore comparing logical criticism is necessary by the healthcare professional which will ensure that they are position and ways to increase their performance and productivity. 

 

Under what conditions would you sever a networking relationship? Explain your answer.  

 In order to spread a networking relationship in the health and social care organisations, it is important to analyse the conditions first otherwise networking may not prove helpful. The facilities of the networking bodies have to be judged by the Quest Diagnostic Lab to ensure that they are spreading their networks in the right directions. They also have assessed their own facilities to ensure that they have the resources to spread their service. Technical advancement is very important as well (Duffus, 2016). Financial and human; both types of resources are very important for the networking and the organisation also has to ensure that the quality of the service is not being hampered by the networking relationship at all. The standard of networking relationship is also being maintained by the organisations or not is also needed to be assessed by the organisation. This spreading of networking relationship ensures that the Quest Diagnostic is able to increase their business contracts and referral networks. 

How would you handle any possible ramifications of this action?  

In order to spread the networking relationship, there are certain consequences related to the organisation can happen. One of the biggest consequences is definitely increasing the risk of information theft of security. In addition to this, there is also a financial risk that the organisation might face due to networking if the cost is assessed beforehand. In addition this, there is also problems like staff handling and management issues that may arise which can lead to increasing wait time for critical care users. This will hamper the reputation of the Quest Diagnostic Lab very deeply. Therefore in order to spread the network of a healthcare organisation it is very important to assess the risks first. Therefore, the impact of the ramification can be assessed very well and important measures can be taken as well.    

The effectiveness of network within the healthcare 

Networks are being utilised by the clinical experts to increase the evidence-based practices which have a direct relationship with the quality care. Following are the usefulness of the networks in the healthcare organisation. 

Advanced networking and computing: Advanced networking is very important factors that the organisation can use for the improvement of the organisation. The advanced technology has increased the networking and computing facilities. The organisations are also able to acquire huge information as well from the networking and the services as well as can avail benefits of effective networking.   

Quality improvement: Networking has also direct relation with the quality improvement of the organisation. The evidence-based research is very much effective in improving the quality of the care which is made easy by networking facilities of the healthcare organisation (Dougill et al. 2017).  

Economic impact: Lastly, the impact of networking is very deep on the organisations. The organisation is able to acquire adequate information which helps them in improving their performance which makes impacts the organisation positively. The positive reputation of the organisation will ensure that the referral rates are increased.

Competitive gains: the organisations are also connected and measure their performance with the leaders of the industry. Therefore routine performance audits can be done easily as well. This ensures that Quest Diagnostics Lab is able to provide adequate service to their care users as oer the standard of the industry (Powers et al. 2015). This will also gain theme competitive advantage with other per diagnostic labs of Australia as well  

In addition to, this collaborating is a key part of networking as well which implies that Quest Diagnostic Lab will be able to provide adequate support to the service users if they have a bigger networking channel. It can happen with expansion as well as collaborating with other diagnostic labs or health care service providers. 


Leave a comment


       
Captcha

Related :-