The Joint Commission

When answering the discussion questions you are required to give detailed answers. I do not want short one sentence answers, I am looking for detailed well written answers. Also, the answer to the questions should come from the reading material (book and powerpoints). However, when responding to your peers postings that is when you can post your opinion on the subject.

1. Why does The Joint Commission now require hospitals and other healthcare organizations to have a performance management system?

2. What are the advantages and disadvantages to including discussions of compensation during a performance management interview?

3. How does a manager decide how to conduct formal performance management interviews?

4. Suppose you are a manager at a low-budget healthcare setting, such as a local health department. How will you recruit new staff and motivate current employees when competitiors in the area able to pay 30 to 40 percent more than your organization can?

5. What warnings would you give to a team designing an incentive system?

6. How will you design a team-based compensation system such that free riders on the team cannot take advantage of the system.

7. What effect has managed care had on designing physician compensation models?

Solution
Question 1: Why does The Joint Commission now require hospitals and other healthcare organizations to have a performance management system?

Answer: The Joint Commission was established with the goals of improving healthcare for the people and monitoring the top level controls and policies implemented in the healthcare organizations. This ensures that the healthcare organizations provide the public friendly services and the costs are in the affordable budget of people. The commission also ensures that all of the stakeholders are involved in making the healthcare feasible, economic and efficient. All of these implications are monitored and controlled by the commission. Therefore, the commission requires hospitals and healthcare organizations to have a performance management system because that would ease the performance and quality appraisals and improvement in the organizations.

Question 2: What are the advantages and disadvantages to including discussions of compensation during a performance management interview?

Answer: During a performance management interview, the employees have the clear ideas of their achievements and their loopholes. They know what they have done and this acknowledgment makes them improve or reduce their performance. This can be tackled by the manager who is conducting the interview by including compensation discussion that the employee will be compensated in some ways in case of performance improvement. This gives the employee an enthusiasm to work harder and improve his performance. The disadvantage of including compensation discussion is that the employee will limit himself in the performance improvement as per the specified compensation for that improvement. He will limit his capabilities.

Question 3: How does a manager decide how to conduct formal performance management interviews?

Answer: The manager can decide to conduct the formal performance management interviews in the following ways:

·         When a new employee is hired, the manager can conduct a performance management interview to give him the insights of the performance adherence policies by the employees.

·         The manager can also check the current status of the employee.

·         After every month, the manager can conduct interviews for performance appraisals.

·         The manager decides the procedure of performance management interviews in terms of the tenure of the employees, their recent accidents, their recent achievements and their productivities in the job.

·         With these variables, the manager can decide how to and when to conduct performance management interviews.

Question 4: Suppose you are a manager at a low-budget healthcare setting, such as a local health department. How will you recruit new staff and motivate current employees when competitors in the area able to pay 30 to 40 percent more than your organization can?

Answer: If I am a manager at a low budget healthcare setting, I would do the following to recruit new staff and motivate the existing employees:

·         I will hire the new employees by including the compensation discussion in job interviews and tell them that they would get many benefits during their job tenures.

·         I will specify better benefits than those of competitors such as extra vacation days, yearly bonuses and salary increments every year.

·         I will set milestones in performance improvement and if anyone reaches that milestone, I will reward him with incentives.

These strategies will motivate the existing employees and new employees will join the organization with satisfaction of growth and benefits.

Question 5: What warnings would you give to a team designing an incentive system?

Answer: Designing an incentive system, I would specify the warning list first and then I would inform every employee of the warning list.

The following warnings will be included in the list:

·         Follow the schedules and working hours strictly.

·         There will be loss of incentives in case of non-compliance to the performance standards specified in the incentive system.

·         Failure to adherence to policies of incentive system would make the employee illegible for the compensation and incentives.

Moreover, the design of the incentive system should follow:

·         Organization policies.

·         A clear and transparent incentive system

·         Should take all of the employees into consideration

Question 6: How will you design a team-based compensation system such that free riders on the team cannot take advantage of the system?

Answer: The free riders in the system are those who don’t put input in the system and want to enjoy the benefits which are provided to the ones doing the main work. To handle this issue, I will design a system which will not give liberty to free riders to take advantage of the system. The system will evaluate the performance of the team and also the individuals of the team separately. The individuals will be evaluated as per their own performance and also their team work. This will clarify the positions of the employees in the team and as individuals. The incentives will be given passing both of the criteria.

Question 7: What effect has managed care had on designing physician compensation models?

Answer: Managed care has affected the designing of physicians’ healthcare models in many ways. These are explained below:

·         The private practice and hospital jobs are compared in paradigm of income lost by hospital due to private practice.

·         The number of satisfied patients served by the physicians which would appreciate the hospitals and spread a good word.

·         The physicians are compensated as per their services to the hospital in terms of tenure because long tenure would make a physician credible for the hospital.