Good leadership is what leads to the success of any organization or department. With good leadership in the health care sector, there will be a good provision of services and people will have high faith in the system. Performance of health care organization depends on the skills of the personnel, knowledge, and the incentives given by the human resource. With consistency leadership, there will be maximum enhancement and performance of the employees and improved quality of care and outcomes.  For improvement in services, the leader should be able to foster behavioral and cultural changes. Many healthcare organizations have not been able to meet the required management qualities hence provision of poor services that do not meet the expectations of the population. This paper will discuss the kind of leadership exhibited in hospitals.

The leadership in control has for many years mismanaged hospitals. Public hospitals have for many years been investing not in the provision of better services but in getting their name high so that they can earn more profits. Many hospitals admit patients whose conditions do not require admission so that they can generate more income (Islam, Ahmed, & Ali, 2019). With this strategy hospitals find themselves admitting more patient than the level of accommodation services they have and the number of doctors, nurses and hospital staff they have. Despite the hospital generating a large amount of money from these patients, they don’t first prioritize on improving the hospital facilities and hiring more staff. Instead, they allocate more finances on their staff and themselves. This mismanagement behavior makes hospitals to offer poor services and causes the death of many patients. Many wealthy people prefer private hospitals than public hospitals as they believe that private hospitals provide quality services as compared to public ones.

Overreliance in quick fixes is a major problem affecting the public hospitals and is a sign of poor leadership. When a new CEO takes over the leadership of a public hospital, most of them are keen on making significant changes that give people high hopes for his performance (Wang, 2018). Some of these decisions are meant to fix the problem at hand for a short period but give the new CEO credit of his excellent performance. Some of these solutions make the hospital incur huge expenses, but with no time the problem reemerges again. This either paralyzes the services of the hospital, or the management has to go back to the drawing table and allocate more finances to the problem. The problem might continue for some time until the administration decides to provide a long-time solution. Public hospitals should always be investing in long time solutions to fix their problems to ensure the hospital continues to provide excellent services to their patients.

Most leaders in public hospitals are keen to build a name for themselves and the hospital than to concentrate on the provision of excellent services and to meet the required standards required by the population (Prinja et al., 2017). When a hospital is keen on investing in performing major complicated surgeries like heart, surgery, brain surgery or kidney transfer while neglecting some of the minor services it shows the management is keen on building a name for itself. The primary goal of a hospital is the provision of excellent medical services and being reliable. When a hospital is aired every time in the media, it does not show that the services are excellent. Most of the most populous hospitals provide poor health services and only use the press for public relation.

Another significant role of hospital management is the allocation of budget for different organizations in a hospital. For excellent service provision in a hospital, the budgeting process should be a reflection of the needs of the different organization (Islam, Ahmed, & Ali, 2019). When an organization allocates more money to salary, allowances, and non-current expenditure while development, acquiring new equipment and buying of medicine is allocated less money it shows poor leadership decisions. Many leaders allocate more money to finance educational trips and other trips by doctors that add less value compared to acquiring equipment. Many hospitals lack medicines with many patients being sent away without medication for them to go and buy medicines for themselves.

Lack of employee’s motivation lowers the quality of services provided by these employees. Doctors and nurses work for many hours both day and night. Most of them get little time for their family or rest since as soon as one settles to go for rest he or she receives a phone call from the hospital saying that one is needed at the hospital as there is an emergency (Prinja et al., 2017). With all these hard work nurses and doctors are supposed to be one of the most highly paid public servants, but they are not with the government not paying them well, the hospital management also pays them poorly during these extra hours despite the hospital generating high profit. With low payment, the nurses and doctors are not motivated to serve; hence some of the provide inadequate services. Some nurses and doctors also have their clinics and pharmacies, and they prefer working in their own business during these hours instead of going to the hospitals for extra time.

Excessive financial risks taken by leaders in public hospitals are a threat to good performance in a hospital. Some leaders initiate large projects like hospital expansion, hiring new staffs and purchasing new equipment that is expensive and requires high maintenance and specialized expertise to operate on them (Braithwaite et al., 2017). When a hospital is thinking of making such a broad move, they should be well prepared financially for the project. If a hospital takes such a financial risk without being well prepared or without enough knowledge that the project will pay off within a short period, the hospital might find itself in a deep financial crisis that can threaten its provision of services. Many hospitals take such bog financial risks that paralyze the hospital services or leave the hospital in massive debts. Some of these projects initiated might cripple or die entirely due to inadequate risk assessment.

Some hospital leaders have poor leadership qualities as they instill fear in the employees which lead to poor service provision. With the employees fearing their boss it threatens democracy in the hospital where the employees fear to question their boss even when he is wrong (Hu et al., 2016). When a boss makes a  wrong decision and no one dares to correct him, the whole system will fail due to a problem that could have been avoided. Some leaders also give the employees with no choice but to follow his rules.  A feared leader is not good for a hospital, hospitals are very sensitive, and a single mistake can lead to much damage.

Most hospitals are now focused more on making money than the provision of services. Since public hospitals are partially financed by the government and to those who have medical insurance covers their medical bills are catered for by the insurance company (Braithwaite et al., 2017). Many hospitals have devised means of defrauding the insurance company money. This occurs when the patients pay them reasonable prices, but they still request the insurance company to settle the bill. This is a scheme by most hospitals to earn them more money from the insurance company in the name of treating the patient. Other hospitals also admit the patient for long so that the patient can incur many costs for the accommodation and the treatment. This focus on making more at the expense of the patient has led the hospitals to lose credibility with many not having trust in public hospitals.

In conclusion, leadership is the primary determinant of the success of any organization including public hospitals. The public hospital is very much depended on by the public especially the poor people; this is because they are cheaper than the private hospitals. But despite being the hope of many poor people they are continuing to be mismanaged by the leadership in charge, Mismanagement of these public hospitals has caused them to provide inferior services hence making many people lose hope in the system. Some of the challenges faced through poor management are unnecessary risks, concentration on public relation than on service provision, the over-concentration of short time solution of a problem and many other challenges. For a hospital to provide excellent, reliable services the leadership much be experienced and focus much on providing quality services and building hope with the patient.

References

Braithwaite, J., Westbrook, J., Coiera, E., Runciman, W. B., Day, R., Hillman, K., & Herkes, J. (2017). A systems science perspective on the capacity for change in public hospitals. Israel journal of health policy research, 6(1), 16.

Hu, Y. Y., Parker, S. H., Lipsitz, S. R., Arriaga, A. F., Peyre, S. E., Corso, K. A., … & Greenberg, C. C. (2016). Surgeons’ leadership styles and team behavior in the operating room. Journal of the American College of Surgeons, 222(1), 41-51.

Islam, T., Ahmed, I., & Ali, G. (2019). Effects of ethical leadership on bullying and voice behavior among nurses: the mediating role of organizational identification, poor working condition, and workload. Leadership in Health Services, 32(1), 2-17.

Prinja, S., Chauhan, A. S., Karan, A., Kaur, G., & Kumar, R. (2017). Impact of publicly financed health insurance schemes on healthcare utilization and financial risk protection in India: a systematic review. PLoS One, 12(2), e0170996.

Wang, Z. (2018). Challenges in building a rational salary system at public hospitals. Chinese Journal of Hospital Administration, 34(2), 172-173.