Coyne and Messina Articles, Pt. 1

Introduction

Successful and organized management of hospital is a very critical and important aspect of any healthcare industry. For a smooth functioning of the health care facilities and to provide the patients with best possible treatment and care it is essential that every required resources are available to carry out their duties properly. There are two major articles focusing on the hospital management, including what issues can arise to create trouble and what plans can be devised to overcome them and carry out the set objectives. We in this paper will do kind of comparative study of “hospital cost and efficiency: do hospital size and ownership really matter?” by Coyne, Richards, Short, Shultz, Singh and Sean ((2009) and another article titled “The Relationship Between Patient Satisfaction and Inpatient Admissions Across Teaching and Nonteaching Hospitals” by Messina, Scotti, Caney and Zipp. We are going to study both the articles and discuss what they suggest for better functioning of hospitals.

To begin with let us first study what the first paper written by Coyne, Short, Richards, Shultz, Singh and Sean talks about. This research deals with the relation between the infrastructure of hospitals and standards of it and the effects they have on the success ratio of results in their care. A detailed study was done by the above stated researchers into the matter that how having a great and huge infrastructure can affect the results of its medical care and success ratio in care and treatment of patients. This study was supported by a study made in the city of Washington State and most of the hospitals were included in this to get an overview into this problem and study the factors behind it. This study was not done on private hospitals and was limited to no profit making government health institutions that were there in the Washington department’s healthcare list. In this research to determine the efficiency of the system several parameters were set such as five efficiency and five cost measure ratios were put in place to help them with appropriate data to be of some help in their findings. The cost incurred by the institutions is a very big and important factor in determining how the hospital is doing and are there any losses or profit overall based on their working standards and techniques. Studies done based on these parameters suggested that since private hospitals had better infrastructure therefore they had better occupancy space and hence could provide care for much more services compared to the small or government funded hospitals. This was a helpful factor in increasing the efficiency of the hospitals and better financial statistics to show. Though the hospitals which are basically structured on the vision of non-profit making should be a better success but because of their difficult to access routes and difficulties in reaching their, they turned out to be not so successful as the other ones. So we can safely agree that better infrastructure for hospitals helps as it gives more space for patients and other than that easily accessibility and better resources are determining factors too (Coyne, Richards, Short, Shultz, Singh and Sean, 2009)

Now if we are to analyze the first article we can say that it is a very good piece of work to reflect on the hospital management and factors behind it. The fact that authors of the article are experienced person and they have been involved with the issue of hospital management from past some time through their previous writings. Reason behind their writing being so informative and factually correct can be that they themselves have been involved in this field of healthcare as professionals and experienced firsthand how it works and what flaws are there to be corrected. Their experience in both the fields of writing and healthcare makes the article easy to understand and reflected upon as the way of writing is quite brilliant too. Now for anyone who is really new to it and unaware of anything, he can really understand the issue by just reading from beginning to end. They give out all the background information in the first section only along with the crucial terms to make readers understand properly what is being talked about ahead. This organizational representation of facts and figures is a great factor in keeping the standards and value of this work popular and very informative.

Now to discuss the second research article “The Relationship Between Patient Satisfaction and Inpatient Admissions Across Teaching and Nonteaching Hospitals” by Messina, Scotti, Caney and Zipp we can safely say that this is a totally different piece of work when compared to the first article as it focuses on the relation between impatient admissions and patients satisfaction. This is an equally good piece of writing when studied deeply and one of the major reasons for that is the organized discussion of a much less talked about topic of relation between patients satisfaction and impatient admissions. There are not many studies available which talk about it and that is what this study proves to be a valuable asset. In their studies they say that hospitals working on this ideology of patient satisfaction generally tend to end up facing losses not only because of conditions but also due to general issue arising from board level to self drive and up to successful, unsuccessful, high and low achieving institutions (Messina, Scotti, Caney, & Zipp, 2009). These factors generally tend to force such hospitals to optimize their operations to ensure patients satisfaction. Though if they are put under right and well suited management, this characteristic can become a huge asset to bank upon for the health care facility. There are few hospitals with that kind of ideology and if properly managed, these can be a great factor responsible in increasing the market value and respect of the institution. Now talking about the paper, the way the writer describes and talks about all these factors in the beginning so it doesn’t trouble reader and gives him smooth understanding of the subject is quite commendable. Other than that writer has also tried well to inform various different forms in which this situation can arise and give rise to difficulties. This will not only help while finding the problem but also tackle with it. These variations provided also help when otherwise they can go unnoticed due to lack of knowledge. This makes the second paper on hospitals management a really good piece of educational work.

Now if we are to have a look at these articles from academic point of view, we can say that there needs to be evidence in the researches made earlier to prove its authenticity. N when we further look into the second article The Relationship Between Patient Satisfaction and Inpatient Admissions Across Teaching and Nonteaching Hospitals we observe that writers have made quite a number of references with the lives of tons of professionals in this field. This gives an extra piece of connectivity to the readers as they can now relate more to the topic and depend on the information provided with it. Other than this while suggesting new ways and methods to work out the usage of references and quotes in works takes a pretty important place as it gives an extra bit of conviction to support the idea. So, while coming up with new solutions or providing authenticity to work these constant references play an important role (Messina, Scotti, Caney, & Zipp, 2009).

Now if we have to get an overview of the first article “hospital cost and efficiency: do hospital size and ownership really matter?” by Coyne, Richards, Short, Shultz, Singh and Sean; it can be said that it is a very great piece of work and provides great piece of information on the working procedure of hospitals and also talks about how the infrastructure and size of a hospital effect the functioning of them. Now as with every good comes bad so does here. There are lot of positives to take up from that article like it’s fantastic and organized presentation and academically sound nature of it but there are some issues which are not that huge but still matter. One such factor is the complexity of the terms used and the too much detailed explanation of some issues like in second part there has been some avoidable detailed discussion about hospital efficiency and that too in pretty complex terms. Usage of so many complex terms and too much detailed discussion can detract the reader from the issue and may not garner the interest required to publicize the issue and get the required reaction. This is a pretty small negative point of the writing though and can be easily ignored compared to other positives of the article.

References

Coyne, J., Richards, T., Short, R., Shultz, K., Singh, S. & Sean, S. (2009). “Hospital cost and Efficiency: Do hospital size and ownership type really matter?” Journal of Healthcare Management, 54(3), 163-74.
Messina, J., Scotti, J., Caney, R. & Zipp, P. (2009). “The Relationship Between Patient Satisfaction and Inpatient Admissions Across Teaching and Nonteaching Hospitals”. Journal Of Healthcare Management, 54(3), 177-190.