You are a new healthcare administrator having just graduated with a bachelor’s degree in HSA. Your first job is the director of a 250 bed skilled nursing facility You are really excited about your first job as a healthcare administrator and show up early on your first day. When you arrive you find the facility in complete disarray, phones are ringing, patients call buttons are going unanswered, and trash cans are overflowing. You find very few of the night shift employees are still there, those employees still in the building appear to be napping on the job.
After you help answer the phones and direct clinical staff to assist patients, you finally make it into your office where you realize that the issues do not stop on the patient care floor! Bills are unpaid, accreditation requirements are unmet, and nine notices from the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) are lying unopened on the desk, and you find a resignation on the desk from your administrative assistant. It is obvious that you have just walked into a disaster area.
Just then your phone rings and on the other end of the line your boss, the corporate VP for Operations, she sounds very angry. She explains that she just got a report on your facility and you are over budget, your vacancy rates are up, your predecessor did not submit any input to the capital budget process which was due two weeks ago, several employees have complained about the facility and one even suggested that she is being sexually harassed by her supervisor, in a nut shell your facility is falling apart at the seams. You try to explain that you just got to the job but she doesn’t want to hear it, instead she wants to meet with you in two weeks to hear how you are going to fix this and what progress you have made in a two week’s time.
What are you going to do? Make sure that you include your immediate response (what you have done during the first and second week), your immediate plans short term plans, your intermediate plans, and your long term goals. Prepare the report that you will present to your boss that walks her through the steps you have already taken and that you will take in the short, intermediate and long run to bring this facility back to life. Be creative about your facility and the issues that you are confronting.