Cleveland Clinic Growth Strategy

Question One

The Cleveland Clinic’s overall strategy is to create a single standard for patient safety, quality and experience. The components of the strategy include a system of electronic records, integration care paths, outcome reporting and implementing a plan for purchasing medical staff needs (Porter & Teisberg, 2013). Additionally, restructuring of the organizational structure has been implemented to create a new culture, where every employee of the clinic is a caregiver to patients.

The new institutes, which have replaced the traditional departments, have been given autonomy to identify required skills and create their outcome measures for which all the employees in the institute will be held jointly accountable. The rationale for implementing electronic records is for swift and easy access by both patients and physicians. The integration of care aims to provide a unified and consistent service, which can increase the quality of care. Outcome reporting is based on the notion that it provides measurable outcomes that compare past and current performance in order to create future targets. The plan for purchases helps to reduce costs by standardizing requests, which leads to discounts.

Question Two

The clinic has achieved the greatest progress in restructuring of the organizational structure and the creation of a new culture. The change from the traditional structure to an institute based structure has been fully implemented with numerous benefits. By 2012, the main campus was fully restructured. People in all the institutes have adopted the new culture of focusing on the welfare of patients by collaborating and cooperating with colleagues.

Question Three

Improvement is required in the affiliate institutions so that they can deliver the same level of quality care as Cleveland Clinic. The institute-based structure should be implemented in other clinics and hospitals affiliated to the particular clinic. Such changes would ensure that performance is comparable and uniform.

Question Four

There are various approaches to growth available for Cleveland Clinic. The first one is to expand its presence in Ohio and neighboring states through mergers or other relationships with existing hospitals. Secondly, the clinic can grow by increasing the number of cardiac affiliate programs throughout the United States. This action can be viable, given the clinic’s past success and the number of institutions that wish to be associated with it.  The third growth strategy could involve establishing out-of-state hospitals. Since the clinic has had success in setting up such hospitals, it is a viable strategy. Offering telemedical services nationwide is another growth strategy at the clinic’s disposal. The existing service has been effective in reducing diagnostic errors by more than half of the federal percentage. International expansion is the final option available to the clinic. Its pilot project in the United Arab Emirates has led to tremendous success, which indicates the potential of such a strategy.

Question Five

The clinic should use the expansion within Ohio and neighboring states’ initiative, because it would provide it with a chance to gain stability before moving to the whole country and the international market. The state and the entire nation offer a lucrative expansion venture, which would cost less than expanding internationally. Utilizing this plan would allow the clinic to accumulate resources that can empower it to expand internationally in the future.

Question Six

The most important recommendation to Dr. Cosgrove is that once the expansion strategy has moved beyond the state of Ohio, he should consider concentrating on the clinic’s fully owned institutions in other states. Such a consideration would enable the clinic to make progress in implementing changes and new strategies compared to affiliated institutions (Johnson, Yip, & Hensmans, 2012). As evident currently, it is difficult to implement changes in partner organizations. Fully owned facilities would accept the new structure and culture because they will have no other management apart from Cleveland Clinic.

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