HEALTH CARE 8
Running head: HEALTH CARE 1
Gemba Walk
Erica Edmondson
MHA/598
August 23, 2021
Diana Hunt-Wagner
Gemba Walk
Organization Summary
Nitchell is a Non – Governmental Organization that specializes in health matters. It focuses on lobbying for quality health care provision on both public and private facilities. The organization comprises 100 members who work voluntarily. Some of the most significant activities that Nitchell engages in are surveys to identify the nature of services rendered in various health centers in Southern America and lobby for the necessary changes. Additionally, the organization carries out free seminars on matters concerning health to all members of the public. The education exercises are usually carried out in random places, using trucks fitted with public address systems, and professionals in the groups who have expertise on health matters teach the public the best health practices. The key focus that the organization majors on are the lifestyle diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disorders, among other conditions. Lobbying is carried out through protests, social media use, and direct reporting to government officials on the various health services that need to be improved in the southern part of America.
Context
Due to the nature of the organization’s mandate, Gemba walks are of supreme importance. Taking a Gemba walk enables the organization’s officials to see the problems that people are experiencing on health care fronts (Metsolahti et al., 2018). Consequently, the organization’s team takes a Gemba to walk to various health facilities to observe the details of the health aspects that need to be changed and better strategies applied. The most recent Gemba walk was to the referral hospitals in Southern America after a public outcry concerning the expensive nature of the services offered in those facilities. The organization had received information concerning the general increase in medical tourism facilitated by the unaffordable health care system in America. Societies living in the southern part of America comprise mainly of low social class individuals who thus cannot afford the expensive services offered by the referral hospitals found in South America. Persons who have diabetes in South America had also complained about the inaccessibility of the treatment therapies due to their costs. To ascertain the people’s claim, the organization’s leadership took a Gemba walk to a referral hospital found at a referral hospital in Carolina and made the necessary observations. Additionally, patients were interviewed during the Gemba walk to determine the problems they faced. The information gathered would thus be used to push the government to make the necessary adjustments to offer health care equitably and effectively to all people.
Observations
The observations made during the Gemba walk ascertained the claims that had earlier on been raised by the people concerning the state of health care in the hospital. The nurses were demoralized due to the government’s lack of proper equipment and failure to cater for their needs. Additionally, structural racism had rendered the area and its populations impoverished due to the lack of support from the government. Most of the people in South America lack medical cover, thus acquiring health services difficult for them. Additionally, there were no imaging, surgical, and other advanced medical tools in the hospital, thus rendering the institution unable to offer the needed health care services to the people whose sicknesses demanded critical care attention. The Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds were few and thus could not effectively serve the population’s demand, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic (González-Bustamante, 2021). Therefore, the hospital was not in the right shape and lacked the necessary equipment to enable it to attend to the people’s needs effectively. Finally, the hospital’s administration was overcharging the people, thus rendering them unable to afford even the simple medical procedures at the facility. Expensive health care facilitated medical tourism since the people who feel unable to cater to the costs involved in procuring these services would go to the Latin American countries to obtain the necessary medical attention.
The goal of the Gemba walk was well accomplished. It was to identify the hardships that the people seeking health care services at the hospital were experiencing. Additionally, the Gemba walk focused on identifying the root cause of some of the health care challenges that people have had to participate in due to negligence and failure to perform by the government. The other objective was to identify the treatment cost implications to ascertain the claims that health care services were too expensive at the hospital. Thus, the Gemba walk was informed by a hypothesis that healthcare provision at the hospital in Carolina is ineffective and too costly for the people seeking it to afford.
The observations made thus proved the hypothesis to be accurate and rendered the organization well equipped with the necessary facts to face the government and lobby for change. The hospital’s lack of proper medical facilities could only be linked to the systematic racism that mainly undermines black communities and deprives them of their rights. The enormous costs applied by the hospital are unreasonable. Thus, they are a result of oppressive administration in the health facility, which renders the facility non-beneficial to the low-income earning majority in the area. Medical tourism should not be the case, especially for hardworking American citizens who pay enough taxes to cater to their health care needs (Hemmati et al., 2017).
Opportunities
During the Gemba walk, the organization had various opportunities that related to its nature of activities. The hospital’s lack of appropriate medical equipment, inadequate service provision, and the expensive costs attached to the simple therapeutic interventions made at the hospital are opportunities for the organization. Nitchell specializes in telling the government and administrators of various institutions about the need to avail the right services to all Americans regardless of race or other diversities that have been used to divide people in the past. Consequently, the observations made by the organization facilitated its structured interventions that will entail activities meant to push the suitable administrative organs to act and avail the needed services to the citizens.
Inefficiencies were minimized by taking the initiative to visit the hospital and observing to avoid relying on information given from sources that are not credible. As a result of taking the Gemba walk, the organization can organize the proper agitation mechanisms, face the necessary people, and ensure good service provision to American citizens who need to be attended to appropriately. There were no more than ten officials of the organization taking the Gemba walk. Thus, the use of just a few members to find out the truth of the allegations made concerning the hospital was cost-effective, thus minimizing wastage. The process of pushing the government and the hospital administration to offer competent services to Americans will be improved since the organization will face the proper authorities precisely. Additionally, because the organization does not engage in excessive spending, there will be adequate finances to launch activities meant to pile pressure on the necessary authorities to force them to carry out health reformations that would benefit Americans.
The individuals spoken with during the Gemba walk were the patients queuing for services at the hospital and some of the health care workers in the facility. Patients were asked to provide the necessary information concerning their satisfaction with the services rendered to them at the hospital, both currently and in the past. Health care workers in the facilities were also interviewed to determine their role in creating the difficulties experienced by the people in health care service acquisition. The hospital administration was also interviewed to determine the hardships that the staff and patients must go through and where the source of the challenges is for the organization to have precise targets.
Among the health care workers interviewed during the Gemba walk include nurses whose roles are patient care, and they were asked about the complaints levelled against them by patients who have been at the hospital for medical care. Additionally, the laboratory technologist was requested to offer information concerning medical instrumentation deficit in the hospital. The role of the laboratory technologist involves ensuring that all medical equipment at the hospital remain functional and at the correct status. Additionally, the laboratory technologist keeps track of the hospital inventory to determine the missing equipment and request and make requests to the Department of Health via the hospital administrator’s office.
The lessons learned from the hospital workers were that challenging environments increase competence and boost an individual’s skills to improvise. Due to the shortage of the needed medical equipment at the hospital, the health care workers had devised alternatives to counter each shortage and provide primary care to the patients reporting for services. Racism is still evident in America today, as evidenced by the marginalization of black communities. Lack of the required medical services results from the move by the government to ensure that black communities do not access the needed services.
Short-term and Long-term Goals
The organization’s short-term goals regarding the health care provision status of the hospital are an urgent demonstration outside the Department of Health offices to lobby for change. Additionally, the organization is to write a letter to the local Congressman on the need to support the lobby for change and improvement of the health care service provision in the area. The long-term goal is to see the Americans living in the southern states enjoying quality health services just like their counterparts living in North America.
References
González-Bustamante, B. (2021). Evolution and early government responses to COVID-19 in South America. World Development, 137, 105180.
Metsolahti, J., & Oy, YI (2018). What is a Gemba walk. Referenced, 10, 2020.
Hemmati, F., Dabbaghi, F., & Mahmoudi, G. (2017). Meta-analysis of the impact of medical tourism and health tourism in the United States of America and Canada in the treatment of cancer. Macro ergonomics: An approach to improve safety efficiency and the quality of working life, 374.
The post HEALTH CARE 8 Running head: HEALTH CARE 1 Gemba Walk Erica Edmondson appeared first on PapersSpot.
