Team or Hot Mess? - Case for Chapter 13 Susan Casciani Section 1: Background and Character Description Cardinal Health Cardinal Health is a small pediatric hospital, located in the inner city of a small metropolitan area. It is affiliated with one of the major health networks in the city and enjoys a collegial relationship with the other hospitals serving the area by serving their pediatric specialty needs. The executive leadership team at Cardinal is very young in their tenure. Approximately 3 years ago the then-CEO was fired due to a fiscal crisis arising from his perceived poor management. The new CEO is a former Chief Financial Officer from one of the other local hospitals. He brought with him an impressive array of colleagues who are now his executive managers. Although this new executive team has experienced early successes and is generally very well-liked and respected, the culture of the hospital is still one of distrust of management as it is still reeling from years of revenue drought and budget cuts. Below are character descriptions for several health care managers at Cardinal Health. . Maureen - Assistant Administrator, Outpatient Clinics Maureen is 32 years old, newly married with no kids. Her never[1]married sister and her two kids (ages 4 and 6) live with Maureen and her husband and are a constant source of crisis. Maureen is the only one in her family who went to college. Maureen's mother, with whom she was very close, has recently passed away. Maureen's husband wants to sell their current house in the suburbs and move farther out and buy some farmland, but Maureen wants to move to the city. Maureen has an MBA from a prestigious local college and has worked hard to get where she is. She has been at Cardinal for 2 years in her current position and prior to that worked in the banking industry. Although it is unclear what her future career focus is, Maureen definitely wants to "get ahead." When approaching problems, Maureen has a laser focus on the financial aspects. She is extremely driven and lacks patience for anyone she deems "not smart enough." Maureen presents herself as a "woman in a man's world" and sometimes overcompensates for this. She can come across as very brusque, kowtowing to no one. . Dino - Director, Finance Dino is 32 years old, with a stout yet athletic build, and is a snappy dresser. He is happily married and has a 5-year old daughter and a 2-year old son. He and his wife own a home in an upper-class neighborhood, and Dino has a bit of a car fetish, owning several classic cars. Dino has a bachelor's degree in finance and is a CPA. He was previously the Director of Finance at a much smaller hospital in a neighboring state and has been with Cardinal for 3 years; he moved here to be near his wife's family. Dino feels very strongly that he should be promoted to Chief Financial Officer and is secretly actively looking for such an opportunity. Dino is very outspoken and firm in his beliefs and is happy to share his opinion regardless of whether or not it was asked for. Dino is a hard worker, stays focused, and gets the job done. He could use a bit more tact when dealing with people and often comes off "rough around the edges." . Tyree - Assistant Administrator, Ancillary Services Tyree is 30 years old, very tall, and tends to be soft spoken. He has a rather quiet personality but is very likable. He is happily married, and he and his wife are expecting a baby in a few months. They own a home in a middle-class neighborhood near the hospital. Tyree has a master's degree in HCM and is extremely intelligent. He has been with Cardinal for 2 years and is interested in working in HCM from a very broad perspective. He's not sure where his future career might take him, and although he is happy in his current position, he is not committed to staying at the hospital. Tyree is very thoughtful in his dealings with people, and he will often be the "cool head" of the group, offering potential rationales for other people's shortcomings and trying to maintain the peace. That said, if Tyree believes there is a correct path, he will take it and not look back. He always meets deadlines and produces high quality work. . Dr. Charles Ingmar Peterson ("Chip") - Chief of Pediatrics Chip is quickly approaching retirement. He married his high school sweetheart and has several grown children and a few grandchildren. He recently purchased a popular nightclub in town and made a grand show of handing out free drink coupons to everyone in the hospital, including patients/parents. Chip is a board-certified pediatrician and oversees the residency program with the university; he holds a professor rank with the university for this purpose. Chip has been with the hospital for so long no one can remember when he wasn't. He has seen many administrators come and go over the years, each, in his opinion, with the new "flavor of the month" on how to run a hospital. Chip prefers to be called "Chip" instead of Dr. Parsons, yet it is always clear that you should never forget he is a physician (with all appropriate accolades due). Chip is very "old school" and does not appreciate having to deal with female administrators, although to his credit he does realize he needs to adjust his viewpoint. Chip realizes that "these times they are a-changin" in health care, but he is going kicking and screaming. Despite wearing so many hats, Chip always attends administrative meetings and is very dedicated to the hospital and its patient base. He does his best to be fair and ethical, and to make sure everyone else does the same. . Ralph - Director, Facilities Ralph is 51 years old, with the appearance of a blue-collar sports fan, beer belly and all. Ralph has been married for over 30 years and has two grown daughters. He and his wife own a small home in one of the older sections of town, just outside the city line. Ralph has a college degree, although it is unknown what the degree is actually in. Ralph has decades of experience with construction and building, during most of which he has been a supervisor. He has been with the hospital for 10+ years but has no specific interest in health care. It is also unknown if Ralph has any career aspirations other than his current position. Although no one says it to his face, Ralph's nickname is "Eeyore" from Winnie-the-Pooh due to his constant "woe is me" attitude; according to Ralph, everything is a problem and he's always the one who has to fix it. This may be partly due to the fact that unforeseen delays often occur in facility projects, and Ralph always has to take the heat for not meeting deadlines. Rather than offer solutions to problems, Ralph often points out problems with other people's solutions, offering what he sees as "reality checks." However, Ralph gets his job done and done well, and does not directly cause any significant problems along the way. . Monika - Assistant Administrator, Nursing Monika is 35 years old, married with two young kids, and has a mouth like a trucker and is not afraid to use it. Monika still likes to party hard, yet somehow manages to make it to work the next day and be productive. It seems like Monika is always laughing and having fun, and she can almost always be found with gum in her mouth. Monika has her RN and an MSN. She has been in nursing for her entire career and with Cardinal for the last 15 years. Despite her distaste for administrators in general, she thrives on her role as senior management. Monika struggles with this paradox because although she views executive management as at odds with the goals of nursing, she secretly would like to one day be the Chief Nursing Officer. Monika is very intelligent and will tell you exactly what she thinks and won't bother to sugarcoat it. She is the queen of multi-tasking, being vocal in meetings and jotting down notes all while responding to pages and texts on her smartphone. She has "sticky notes" everywhere. If you need her to be somewhere or do something you can count on her to do it, just don't count on her giving you/it her full attention. . Hyun - Director, Strategic Planning At 28 years old, Hyun is the youngest of the administrative team. He is single with no kids and owns a home in the northern area of the city where he lives with his faithful dog. He is not originally from the area and has no family here but has lived here for about 8 years. Hyun is a freshly minted MS in HCM and was hired by one of his adjunct professors from his master's program who is a VP at the hospital; he has been with the hospital less than a year. Hyun has about 8 years of experience in health care, but none of it is with a hospital. Hyun considers himself extremely lucky to have landed this job and is intent on making the VP proud of his hiring choice. Hyun has the perfect personality for his role as strategic planner, being analytically-minded with good interpersonal skills. Although he is off to a great start, as the youngest and newest of the administrative team Hyun feels that he has something to prove to his peers. When Hyun was hired, there was no office space allocated for him. His office is currently in a converted closet located in a prime location within the executive suite, providing him constant access to all the top-level executives and their assistants; the executives have welcomed him into their "circle" based on the VP's personal recommendation of him. It didn't take long for Hyun's peers to dub him the "mini-me" of the VP who hired him. Some of his peers don't trust him, thinking that he serves as a mole for executive administration in order to make himself look good. . Audrey - Director, Quality Audrey is 52 years old, married, with grown children. She is rather soft spoken, but definitely knows her stuff. She recently joined Cardinal after spending 3 years with a different hospital, in a similar position. Prior to that position, Audrey worked in the law field and was very successful. She thinks very analytically, making sure she has all the information necessary before deciding and expects everyone else to do the same. Audrey is finding that although everyone at Cardinal "talks the talk" of quality management, very few actually "walk the walk." Audrey is frustrated over what she sees as an obvious lack of executive support for the importance of her position and responsibilities. Section 2: Three Part Case Case Study Part 1 The CEO of Cardinal, a medium-sized community pediatric hospital, decided to pull together a team to work on the expansion of the orthopedic clinical service line for the hospital. He delegated the task to one of his assistant administrators, Maureen. It was a Thursday afternoon and Maureen wanted to get started right away, so she sent out an email to everyone setting up a meeting for the next afternoon at 3 p.m. The email went to Tyree, Assistant Administrator of Ancillary Services; Dino, Director of Finance; Chip, Chief of Pediatrics; Monika, Assistant Administrator for Nursing; Hyun, Director Strategic Planning; and Ralph, Director of Facilities. At the meeting, Maureen started by explaining the taskthe team was to develop and implement an expansion plan for the orthopedics service line, both outpatient and inpatient. Although the CEO had not given her a specific timeframe, Maureen instructed the group that the development plan needed to be . finalized by the end of the quarter, which was in 3 weeks. Due to the condensed timeframe, Maureen instructed everyone to "clear their schedules" and make this effort a priority. Then she attempted to get down to business. Ralph was first to comment, saying that he didn't even know why he was here, since there was no plan yet that required anything from Facilities. Dino sat in his seat with his hands folded across his chest, annoyed that he had to attend a meeting on Friday afternoon. Chip wanted to know why he was not consulted sooner. Monika was busy texting and writing furiously on her notepad. Hyun tried to present some background information on the reason the CEO had requested the expansion of the service line, but Dino interrupted him, saying "The more you talk the longer this meeting is going to take." Maureen, annoyed that Hyun was trying to usurp her authority over the meeting, told Hyun what was needed was a plan for the future, not rehashing the past. Tyree moved uncomfortably in his seat and suggested maybe they should hear what Hyun had to say so they were all on the same page. At this, Maureen threw her hands up in disgust and said, "Why can't you guys just focus on the task?!" For Part 1 of the analysis, you are to take on the role of Maureen, using the Case Study Guidelines. Determine the major problem thus far as it relates to teamwork, and present two alternate solutions that Maureen could implement to address the problem. Case Study Part 2 Although Maureen and Hyun were technically equal peers on the organizational chart, Maureen liked to drop not-so-subtle comments about how she was more familiar with the CEO's intentions than Hyun was, since she had been at Cardinal longer than Hyun. In her mind, this put Maureen at a higher level than Hyun, and thus his superior. Hyun was very familiar with . Maureen's need to be in charge; he put up with it only because arguing with Maureen over anything less than a world war was exhausting and usually pointless. After the disastrous first meeting, Maureen marched down to Hyun's office. She stormed in while Hyun was on the phone and threw her pile of papers on his desk, making a loud thump. Hyun politely ended his phone conversation, hung up the phone, leaned back in his seat with his hands on the armrest, and braced himself for the onslaught. Maureen wasted no time in telling Hyun how important she was to this project; this should be obvious, she explained, as the CEO had hand-picked her to be the lead. She informed Hyun that she was sticking to her original timeline and ranted about how Hyun's mentioning of how and why this particular expansion strategy came about was not only a waste of time but was a diversion from the purpose of the meeting, which was to develop a plan within three weeks. Hyun looked at the clock and realized it was now 4:57 p.m. and he had to leave no later than 5:00 p.m. or his dog Ditka, who had been left home alone since 8 a.m. this morning, would undoubtedly crap all over his new carpet...again. Hyun told Maureen he got her point, wished her a good weekend, and left the office. As the team filed into the conference room on Monday for its second meeting, Dino loudly commented to Tyree that he could only stay for 30 minutes; he had to be at another meeting with a group of primary care physicians to talk about their revenue numbers and "you know how those docs get when you tell them they're not bringing in the cash." Ralph did not show up for the meeting, although this was such a common occurrence that no one commented on his absence. It was assumed that Chip was absent because he was seeing patients. Maureen stood at attention at the head of the table as the others filed in. Hyun arrived and took a seat next to Tyree and Monika, without saying . much other than a brief greeting. Maureen started the meeting by reminding everyone of the aggressive timeline for the expansion plan, and then launched into a discussion of the expansion plan recently developed for the cardiology service line. That plan included a relatively small addition of dedicated OR block time for cardiac surgery, along with the hospital's Director of Physician Relations tasked to target some primary care docs for referrals. Maureen concluded by stating that a similar plan for orthopedics was a no-brainer and could be implemented quickly. Tyree said that he was concerned that ortho was not the same market as cardiology and thus might warrant a different approach. Hyun chimed in and started to explain the rationale behind each of the strategies, carefully trying not to step on Maureen's toes and yet still get his point across. Even though they were only 15 minutes into the meeting, Dino got up and loudly announced that he had to leave for his next meeting. Maureen jumped on the interruption as a chance to refocus the team back to her original direction. As Maureen talked, Tyree looked around and noticed that there were now only four people left in the room. For Part 2 of the analysis, you are to take on the role of Hyun, using the Case Study Guidelines. Determine the major problem at this point as it relates to teamwork, and present two alternate solutions that Hyun could implement to address the problem. Case Study Part 3 Maureen was having a bad day. The first two meetings for her newly assigned project had not gone well. The day after the second meeting, Chip found her in the cafeteria and said he had heard the new ortho expansion plan was only going to include incremental new OR time. He had already spoken to his ortho physician colleagues who, upon hearing that their service line was up for expansion, informed Chip that they were "happy to hear . they would finally be getting the OR time they deserved." Chip knew this also meant they expected the prime OR blocks. He was furious that decisions had been made without him. Maureen boldly reminded him that he had not attended the meeting, at which point Chip threw his power card and pointedly reminded Maureen that he was seeing patients, and last time he checked that was a revenue generator for the hospital. Chip stormed off and Maureen was annoyed that she had let him get the better of her. Knowing Chip was a power player on her team, she begrudgingly rescheduled the third meeting for Friday afternoon, since Chip didn't have office hours and thus could attend. This meant a certain delay in her project timeline, and she cursed him under her breath as she sent out the email. At this third meeting, everyone was in attendance except for Ralph. Maureen brought everyone up to speed and emphasized the critical nature of the timeframe, while stressing that mimicking the cardiology expansion plan should be an easy win. At this point Tyree again said that perhaps they should confirm that the markets for both services were similar enough to warrant similar expansion plans. Monika joked under her breath that "management" sees all the service lines as the same anyway. Chip started to get agitated and lit into Maureen about how she obviously didn't listen to a word he had to say the other day. At this point Dino interrupted everyone and angrily said that he was sick of people wasting his time like this on a Friday afternoon. Maureen audaciously told Dino to sit down and be quiet and turned her attention back to Chip. As she did so, she saw Audrey walk in the roomshe had not been invited. For Part 3 of the analysis, you are to take on the role of Tyree, using the Case Study Guidelines. Determine the major problem at this point as it relates to teamwork, and present two alternate solutions that Tyree could implement to address the problem.

Buchbinder, S. B., Shanks, N. H., & Kite, B. J. (2019). Introduction to health care management. Jones & Bartlett Learning, LLC. Created from umichigan on 2023-04-11 17:09:04. Copyright 2019. Jones & Bartlett Learning, LLC. All rights reserved.

1. After reviewing "Part 1 of the analysis," you are to take on the role of Maureen using the Case Study Guidelines. Determine the major problem thus far as it relates to teamwork. Please justify your answer.

2. Considering your answer to question 1, present two alternative solutions that Maureen could implement to address the problem.

3. After reviewing "Part 2 of the analysis," you are to take on the role of Hyun using the Case Study Guidelines. Determine the major problem at this point as it relates to teamwork. Please justify your answer.

4. Considering your response to question 3, present two alternative solutions that Hyun could implement to address the problem.

5. After reviewing "Part 3 of the analysis," you are to take o the role of Tyree using the Case Study Guidelines. Determine the major problem at this point as it relates to teamwork. Please justify your answer.

6. Considering your answer to question 5, present two alternative solutions that Tyree could implement to address the problem.

- Organization and citation: 5 points

B. Reply to two other students:

1. What did you miss and others did not?

2. What you covered, and others did not?

3. What did you learn; how would you change your post after reading others'?