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IIMB Management Review

Document Type

Article

Abstract

Historically hospitals were considered as charitable institutions and run bya few committed persons who carried almost the total burden of providing services. But today hospitals have not only grown in size, but also these have highly qualified professional, paraprofessional and technical manpower handling highly sophisticated technology, to provide high quality health careto a maximum number of pesons in need of different kinds of health services. Therefore, hospitals today are very complex organisations to be managed effectively and efficiently. However, professional management is lacking in our hospitals which has severe repercussions on the patient care delivery of the hospitals. Management problems in hospitals are many which need proper attention. Due to lack of coordination of human efforts in the hospitals, there is fragmentation of hospital services which adversely affect patient care. Often in the name of professional autonomy, hardly any policy guidelines are followed, resulting in poor control of activities in hospitals. There is also unclear assignment of tasks and delegation of authority which have led in bottlenecks in decision making and poor control over the activities. Further, human needs of the hospital personnel are forgotten leading to frustration among personnel which are manifested in the form of negative behaviour towards the helpless patients. There is also deterioration of labour relations in all categories of personnel in the hospital. Though teamwork is important to hospitals, only lip service is paid to team building. All these problems have led to low productivity and poor quality of services, in spite of high investment on highly qualified manpower and sophisticated technology. This has pushed up the cost of hospital services to a great extent.

Publication Date

7-1-1987

First Page

194

Last Page

210

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