Describe the ways that management from each hospital considered their external environment, and how this led them to different decisions regarding PPE and staffing.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, two hospitals in the same large metropolitan city had very different experiences.
In order to save money, United Oak Hospital typically kept about 1 month of supplies on hand, including personal protective equipment (PPE)
such as surgical masks and gowns and N95 masks used to filter airborne pathogens. United Oak’s senior leadership team was very focused on financial performance and often pushed to pay lower salaries than other hospitals in the city.
They also kept staffing levels as low as possible to ensure that they could meet their financial goals. As a result, nurses and physicians often felt overworked and burned out, and would leave to work at different hospitals in the city with better pay, hours, and patient loads.
When the pandemic hit, United Oak Hospital was unprepared to handle the rapid influx of patients. Within a week, its PPE was out of stock and national shortages made it difficult to procure more. Administration resorted to asking their doctors and nurses to use garbage bags and bandanas to try to protect themselves from the virus while caring for their sick patients.
Employees began to post pictures of the working conditions on social media, which generated national outrage at the working conditions. The hospital was inundated with patients, most of whom had tested positive for COVID-19. Their intensive care unit beds were filled, and all ventilators were in use for unstable patients in critical condition as a result of the virus. Morale was completely eroded among the staff, and amid the high stress, frequent medical errors were being made. On a particularly tumultuous day, a group of nurses refused to leave the break room unless the administration brought in more nurses to help with the overwhelming number of patients.