Communication Plan Assignment: Issues In Healthcare Management

Question

Task: A specific communication plan in relation to an issue that is important to you and relevant to health or aged care management. Detailed plan

Answer

Introduction
The primary issue in the communication plan developed within this communication plan assignment is considered as the general issues in healthcare management organizations. The problem arises to several healthcare management organizations along with security and regulatory compliance discrepancies from patients and healthcare personnel (Kerzner, 2019). There were a several instances in past with security shortfalls in healthcare industries and organizations. In hospitals, several ethical and legal issues can occur related to patients’ care, their health check-up, treatment, and services offered from healthcare industries (Rossmann, 2019). Moreover, the management issues, HR issues, and even communication issues can stop improvements in hospital these days. Therefore, ethical, HR management, communication issues in healthcare domain is viewed as growing concern to focus and resolve with a suitable communication plan.

This communication plan presented in the context of communication plan assignment introduces the problem with extensive research on the agenda identified. The study includes its objectives and relevance to the communication plan requirements and elements of it. The communication plan, systematic strategy and decision-making are present behind the process. In an overall communication plan assignment, this particular communication plan could be considered as a tool for best practices in healthcare management industries.

What is the background of the communication plan explored in this communication plan assignment?
Communication is essential to any field or sector that includes domestic, commercial, healthcare, industrial, government and others. The main purpose of communication is to ensure a proper flow of information between two or more parties so that each party has sufficient knowledge regarding a particular topic or incident. According to Pollack & Matous, 2019, it is discussed in this communication plan assignment that the key to a successful running of any organisation or project is proper communication among the stakeholders and in order to ensure the same, the organisations must develop appropriate communication plan involving all stakeholders. As per (Locke et al., 2019), the communication plans must include four specific aspects: the name of the stakeholder, the purpose of communicating with him, frequency of communication with this stakeholder and how the communication is to be carried out. This plan provided in the communication plan assignment is to be considered as a rule or standard that needs to be followed by all the stakeholders of the organisation.

The main objective of the strategy proposed in this report on communication plan assignment is to ensure the organisation follows a specific standard of communication that will ensure flow of information among the stakeholders involved in the organisation. The specific steps that need to be taken include development of the plan and undertaking sessions with the stakeholders so that the stakeholders are aware about their responsibilities in establishing communication with the other stakeholders. One possible barrier to this objective is that the stakeholders themselves may not agree with the plan and will not follow communication plan guidelines. Some costs might be involved if training sessions are undertaken regarding the communication guideline as discussed above.

Several healthcare management issues exists in the field of healthcare or in aged care management facilities. Along the usual issues, some problems in this domain are considered as major catastrophe with losing patient and sometimes, faulty diagnosis can cost numerous lives. Some problems are becoming more complex and causing community unrest and dispute due to these reasons. Due to lack of communication, health or aged care management facilities are facing severe service risks and uncertainties over the care (Shirley, 2020). There are some regulatory changes adopted for resolving some of the issues in the healthcare domain. However, there are other economic challenges in the healthcare management organizations as well. The primary focus of the communication plan build in this communication plan assignment is to resolve the management issues such as HR management and communication issues in healthcare industries. The stakeholder and communication management issues in health or aged care facilities include lack of caretakers’ training, cultural differences, behavioural inconvenience, and language differences as well (Locke et al., 2019). Health or aged care facilities recruit people from different communities and their generation gap, cultural differences; diversity in language, race, and gender can be potential issues in communication strategy adoption.

Based on the identified problem of healthcare industries, the communication plan should be formulated in this report on communication plan assignment. The communication plan should be designed for obtaining major principles of communication requirements such as teamwork, conflict management, risk address, solution brainstorming, and others (Pollard, 2019). The communication plan should include a prerequisite of the people, their capabilities, and other assumptions. Based on these aspects provided herein communication plan assignment, the communication plan should be mentioned in format of steps and smaller procedures. Communication plan should be enforced as a policy for the employees to work effectively under the healthcare domain (Pollack & Matous, 2019). The measurement and evaluation of the plan should include the metrics and clearance level of information sharing among the personnel. Furthermore, the communication plan should be employed as an agile development of workflow to address continuous improvement over the activities.

Development of Communication Plan
Effective communication plan should include essential elements of the information sharing such as communication channels identification, matrix formulation, stakeholders’ identification, communication requirements, and purpose of the communication plan (Matos et al., 2019). These elements mentioned in the communication plan assignment are primarily required when a communication plan is to be prepared. These elements are discussed in this section according to their importance.

Communication channels identification is part of communication plan where media of communication should be addressed in which the stakeholders can be connected and the relevant information can be passed (Sipes, 2019). The media of communication should consider aspects of security, privacy, and sharing constraints.

Communication matrix is considered as part of communication plan where the rules and regulations can be addressed so that information sharing can be controlled based on the matrix guidelines. The communication plan should be incorporated with matrix data whether the regulations should be followed to ensure effective communication.

In this communication plan assignment, stakeholder identification and categorization should be performed in the healthcare domain so that communication planning can be placed with their responsibilities (Grit, 2019). The roles and responsibilities assignment is necessary to address the importance behind seamless communication and information passing among them.

The stakeholders in the healthcare industry include doctors, nurses, system admins, patients and other service providers. The power and interests depend upon the role of the stakeholders played within the industry. For example, in the healthcare industry, both the power and interest of doctor is high whereas for the patient, the power is low and the interest is high. The process of determining the power and interest of a stakeholder within a particular scenario of communication plan assignment is to determine why he is involved in the scenario and how can be influence that particular scenario.

Communication prerequisite should be addressed in the plan so that the effective guidelines should be placed to consider communication and sharing of information. The prerequisites should include security training for the staffs, the requirements of understanding about the security guidelines importance and their relevance with the current organization.

Purpose of communication plan should include the cost intrinsic value and motivation of teamwork. The communication plan can only be followed when the stakeholders are trained with efficient security guidelines and clearance provisions (Reed &Angolia, 2020). Moreover, the communication plan should include protective measures for the employees and the stakeholders so that when information breaches are occurring then protection can be conducted from the organization.

Communication Plan
Communication plan is considered as project management tool for an industry to accomplish their necessary work culture and their workflow management. The communication plan build in the present communication plan assignment should be considered as part of development procedure in the process so that continuous development can be addressed with utmost importance. The problem of team management exists and team members should address the communication and information sharing requirements with appropriate concern so that the personnel should be able to get access to relevant information when it is required (Glegg, Ryce & Brownlee, 2019). The communication plan can be considered as policies for information and knowledge sharing across teams, departments, communities and hierarchy so that effective decision-making can be performed.

As discussed previously within this communication plan assignment, the communication plans must include four specific aspects: the name of the stakeholder, the purpose of communicating with him, frequency of communication with this stakeholder and how the communication is to be carried out. This plan mentioned in the communication plan assignment is to be considered as a rule or standard that needs to be followed by all the stakeholders of the organisation. This essential provides exact information regarding the components of a proper communication plan: who are they, what to tell them, how to tell them, who is going to tell them and when they are going to be told. An example within the healthcare industry is as follows.

Who are they: Doctor

What to tell them: Patient condition

How to tell them: Face to face, medical report

Who is going to tell them: Nurse

When they are going to be told: Daily

Situation Analysis
Situation analysis is considered as a metrics for determining market position for an industry and situation analysis should include clear understanding about goals and objectives. The situation analysis in communication plan obtains the market status of an industry with global perspective (Cicala, 2020). Situation analysis should incorporate goals, objectives, culture, industry strengths, weaknesses, and overall market position as well.

Situation analysis for these healthcare industries include following goals and objectives provided within this communication plan assignment such as:

1. To achieve better community standard and diversity guidelines for communication of healthcare service
2. To gather more authentic training techniques to address stakeholders’ performance
3. To attain better control and management over patients information for adapting new communication strategy

The objectives of the healthcare industry should be obtained as:

1. To formulate new training sessions for caretakers in health or aged care facilities
2. To practice suitable diversity exercises in aged care facilities such as talk sessions, group sessions, and indoor games
3. To provide extensive guidance to the workers, staffs, and personnel
4. To practice hiring people with suitable communication expertise, the necessary eligibility criteria and selection criteria should be prepared

Furthermore, the culture of the healthcare industry should adhere to coordinated communication for the work. During cross department healthcare facilities or inter-department operations; the personnel should consider sensitive patients diagnosis data, private information, prescribed information with utmost guidelines of communication. These elements outlined in this section of communication plan assignment should be a part of priorities while information is to be shared (Yap et al., 2019). Apart from the privacy and security concerns, the department should adhere the strength of their workforce to address communication strategy. More collective effort from their team would bring additional help over teamwork. The strength of workforce division and collective effort would ensure hierarchy based workload management and suitable community guidelines. However, major stakeholders in the workforce would incur cultural concerns over diversity issues among multiple workers (Hirsenberger et al., 2019). Therefore, talking with other people and group sessions would bring stability in diversity guidelines. Therefore, lack of cultural differences would result in better communication practices.

Stakeholder Analysis
As per the scenario of communication plan assignment, stakeholder analysis would ensure workforce development and teamwork planning with collective responsibility and role assignment. The responsibility and role should be assigned based on stakeholder’s abilities and their working experience as well (Akhmetshin et al., 2019). The responsibilities should be identified as following.

Lead Administration Manager: The lead administration manager should acquire the responsibility of sharing the communication guidelines with team members. The communication guidelines should be shared through policy documents so that team members such as physicians, personnel, and workers should follow them (Lynn, 2019). In case, these guidelines are not followed, there should be certain measures to handle the lack in guidelines maintenance. The administration manager should have a higher level of communication across the departments.

Lead Supervisor: The supervisor should have a medium level of communication for accessing cross department information of patients and the workers. The supervisor should not be allowed to access administration information or higher information sharing from the department (Safapour, Kermanshachi&Kamalirad, 2019). The supervisor would be responsible for sharing patient data across other departments after the communication channel is approved from higher authority.

Lead Department Manager: The Lead Department Manager should have communication level of sharing information across the team workers such as nurses, physicians, and caretakers. The department manager should be responsible for sharing information among the department personnel and the modification or change information would be restricted from department manager’s end.

Workers and personnel: The nurses, caretakers, and physicians would have medium level of communication for accessing department records and patient information shared from the department manager's end (Tereso et al., 2019). The personnel should communicate with greater responsibility of not sharing details with unauthorized personnel or people as part of restrictions proposed in communication guidelines.

Other Stakeholders: Other category should include security personnel who are taking consideration of securing the facilities with their guarding routine. The healthcare industry requires medical representatives as well to provide support from the medical equipment and medicines (Uzarski & Broome, 2019). These stakeholders should be provided with lowest communication level and information would be shared with them based on the basis of urgency and passing of information requirements.

Key messages
The primary information sharing guidelines should include some essential terminologies and information about communication plan. The primary information should be mentioned in the plan as follows.

The patient information should be utmost priority before it is shared with other personnel. The information sharing would be allowed only after the department has encrypted the private parts of the information and then only the information can be shared to the respective parties (Fonrouge, Bredillet & Fouche, 2019). The patient sensitive information such as diagnosis reports, medicine records, and their physiological information should be kept private.

Communication level should be adhered with utmost importance for the stakeholders and personnel. The communication level should be maintained among the workers based their work profiles and mentioned work responsibilities. In case of promotion, the communication level would be changed from the administration of the department.

The teamwork should be employed for keeping the information sharing with its priority over suitable communication. Hence, the stakeholders should consider information as valuable part of work and should not be sharing it with other people than patient’s family or patient themselves.

The readings utilized to build this communication plan assignment signify that the management of ethics should be another priority to understand the importance of information sharing among the respective workers. The ethical implications should be considered as a benchmark to address the information restrictions and sharing policies in the department. The ethical policies should be enforced among the stakeholders to follow protective measures against information security and privacy.

Communication Channels
The communication channels identification is essential for effective information sharing practices among identified stakeholders. The communication channel should be identified as following.

An online portal should be managed for department wise personnel login and credentials based dashboard management. This online portal would be managed for important work requirements, work guidelines and task outlines over the departments. The portal should have information within a certain clearance level to keep it integrated with security guidelines.

Information sharing should be managed with stakeholders and their respective clearance levels. As per the investigation carried on this communication plan assignment, the hierarchy of organization should include the work process so that organizational staffs would be responsible for sharing towards a recipient. The information should not be shared with outsider parties.

The communication channel should include brainstorming sessions and meeting sessions among the stakeholders. The brainstorming session should be essential for sharing potential inputs over collective team effort to resolve medical dilemma and uncertainties. The brainstorming session would be helpful for stakeholders to gain additional benefits of entire department wise decision-making to engineer best practices over healthcare industries.

Communication Matrix
The communication matrix should include a systematic resolving plan based on identified issues in the healthcare domain. The communication matrix should address the information sharing plan among the stakeholders of the departments. The communication matrix should be prepared as follows.

Patients’ information with diagnosis records: Information should be shared from the supervisor to the nurses and physicians. This information should not be allowed from the department manager perspective. The information can be accessed from supervisor and cannot be updated without physician’s intervention.

Patients’ personal information: It is stated in this communication plan assignment that this information should be shared from the supervisor to administration manager or personnel. The update to this information can be allowed from the administration personnel and the changes should not be allowed from supervisor perspective.

Patients’ booking information: Patients’ appointment details should be handled from the department records management staffs such as receptionists, department managers, and others. These people would keep lowest level of communication aspects just to address the patient booking details and information storing for appointment only.

Patients’ medicine and equipment information: The patient medicine and diagnosis management should be handled based on physician prescription and nurse practitioners guidelines. These details would be shared to the patient family and the patient only. The communication plan should consider covering patient information about medicine and medical diagnosis records.

Conclusion and Recommendations
The communication plan developed within this communication plan assignment should be concluded with considering several aspects for handling flawless and seamless sharing of information among the stakeholders and personnel. The communication plan should be enforced as a tool to cover the information sharing among the personnel over the agenda of ensuring information security and privacy. Therefore, once the communication plan is finalized, the plan should be shared across different departments and team members. Some recommendations should be included into the communication plan assignment as follows.

1. The stakeholders should adhere to information sharing policies and communication matrix to address the information leak and irrelevant information sharing with unauthorized people.
2. The information sharing should be authorized and hence, the communicating parties would be sharing the information based on the protocol followed.
3. The hierarchy of organization should be addressed in case of information or data breaches; so that their highest level of clearance can be used to lockdown the information database whenever it is required.
4. Moreover, the staffs should be trained for the adverse scenarios and they should be aware about security breaches and data privacy issues. Therefore, the communication plan can be effectively followed from the stakeholders perspective.
5. The communication channels should be maintained with higher concerns over less information sharing and more noisy data coverage to cover the private data for the patient. The details of any patient should be addressed with noisy data for lower security clearance and hence, the channel management is essential.
6. Deadlines are extremely essential; once the communication plan is developed, the same must be provided to the stakeholder groups within a period of 2 weeks.
7. In case, special training sessions are necessary, training room can be set up with equipments like projectors and computers. It is known that some barriers will definitely come up including unwillingness of stakeholders to follow the communication rules but it is the duty of the organisation to ensure these cases do not happen. Long-term communication process must also be monitored by the organisation.

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