Organization of Care

     One topic from the reading that I had little to no knowledge of beforehand was the concept of Organizational Forms found in chapter 18 of the text (Huber. 2010.). Essentially Functional Form and Program Form were compared and contrasted when related to the service structure in various health-care settings. Functional Form is the grouping of work by the type of work, for instance Nurses reporting to nurse managers etc. Program form is work grouping by service provided for instance a surgical specialty units. Why can't there be both you might wonder. The large hospitals I have been to all do use both Organizational Forms to a large extent. Specialized units with independent management structure. This is called Matrix Form "people and work are organized along both functional and program dimensions" (Huber. 2010. p 413.).
     This topic was interesting to me because it plays such a huge role in the difference between a good health-care setting and a bad one. Hospitals that can manage the potential fragments in care or achieve a high level of coordination among diciplines are the hospitals that achieve the patient outcomes. My most recent experience with fragmented care was before a routine appointment to meet with a nutritionist. I sat for 45 minutes at the clinic waiting to be seen and then I had to leave to go to work. When a patient leaves instead of waiting forever for thier appointment in the HCMC health system at least it is reffered to as "Elopement". This reminds me of another term that is regularly thrown around, "non-compliant". Patient's have lives and beliefs outside of thier health-care and the more patient centered and organizational form can be the better in my opinion. Language like elopement should be altered to reflect the nature of the problem. Provider time management or scheduling error. While I understand the burden placed on the healthcare system these problems wont be adequately addressed if the language we use doesn't accurately represent the problems at hand.










Huber, D. (2010). Leadership and Nursing Care3 Management. (4th ed). Saunders an Imprint of Elselvier Inc. Maryland Heights, MO