Elizabeth Kim

Organizational Proposal for Strategic Plan Improvement

Part 3 Summary and Recommendations

MPH 600 Econ & Fin Ops

Los Angeles Pacific University - Azusa Pacific University System

Professor Lois Chipman-Sullivan

Research possible improvement tools, methods, and strategies related to the one area of the

organization’s strategy that you selected for improvement.

» A summary of the financial, human, or technology resource challenges of the

organization

The public health organization I decided to choose was Independence at Home (IAH)

which is a non-profit organization part of SCAN Health Plan, a Medicare managed care health

plan. A non-profit organization is created to carry out its mission so that they can make sure that

all the services that they provide to their designated community can receive the services with

quality of care. In reality, though the mission and value of Independence at Home can only go so

far. From my investigation, there were approximately 18,000 clients that one of IAH programs

served thru Multipurpose Senior Services Program (MSSP) provided to their community offering

case management services to seniors over 65+ years of age and needing to meet the eligibility

criteria (Unknown, 2015). Despite serving all these seniors, the stakeholder Cathy was able to

explain that there were at times gaps to those that did not meet the requirements for their

program. Although the program was designed to hopefully target those that were low-income

with Medi-cal eligible, as well as meeting the activities of daily functions of their lives whether

they have a poor quality of ability to walk around, feeding themselves properly or even to use the

restroom (C. Harris, Personal communication, August 8th, 2018). The reason for the gap in

meeting the needs of each and every unique individual is a hard assignment in itself since there’s

a lack of resources.

The organization has a great mission to serve all seniors to provide them with the utmost

quality of care and service to them. Yet there were environmental internal challenges that I saw

while evaluating the organization as a whole. What I’ve noticed was that there was a lack of

communication throughout the organization as there’s a shortage of employees within each

department. Each employee is in charge of a great number of clients, but there are only a few
management leaders that are delegating the work equally and do not have the ability to train

everyone consistently.

Decrease in employees and management team due to lack of financial resources for the

organization as a whole. Due to the lack of training from the management team to employees,

that can lead to miscommunication and too much work being delegated to one employee than the

other. Also, employees had a harder time keeping up with new changes within the organization

as a whole. The management team did not have any policies or procedures developed since the

non-profit organization recently starting growing in the past few years as their pilot studies and

programs are starting to shell out into the community as a whole.

Technology has been ever growing, but after my investigation, IAH continues to use

older programs and the MSSP program is the oldest of them all and as they have no funds to

create a new program as a whole. Also, the workflow processes may have multiple channels of

different databases to enter information as well as the research a client. This makes it for the

organization as a whole to not only lose profit due to loss of productivity and wasting a lot of

time and lack of training makes everyone go at a slower pace.

Overall, financial challenges are what delegates these issues by looking at the community

as a whole. If the organization continues to receive outsourced fundings whether it’s thru other

channels of stakeholders, grants from state/local/federal, as well as thru SCAN Health Plan

Medicare Managed funds. There needs to be a way to manage all of these factors that play a big

role in the organization's environment internally and portrayed externally which is their clients,

which is the center of why this organization even exists.

» A description of the area of strategy you selected for improvement

 The strategy I picked to improve at Independence at Home was really to improve their

core values in the mission of helping seniors stay healthy and independent in their own homes

(Unknown, 2018). The SWOT Analysis will look at IAH biggest strengths, the weaknesses, what

types of opportunities they have, as well as the threats of the company (Blayney, 2008). The

Directors of the organization can utilize this amazing leadership tool to strategically plan their

non-profit organization’s structure on how they’ve been using their resources in financial,

employees they work with and how they use technology to the best of their ability to continue

improving the organization so that they can offer the highest quality of care that’s measurable to

the community at large. SWOT analysis allows them to check their practices, what types of

processes are currently in play and how can their organization improve the quality by using the

tools that may or may not be readily available.

The SWOT analysis would offer IAH the best way to continue expanding their vision in

the right direction as it continues to make a huge impact in the community within Los Angeles,

Orange County, and hopefully expanding all their programs to potentially the whole United

States of America. Strategically planning to make sure that IAH is going in the right direction is

to take action when there are issues that come up. Strategically planning every quarterly would

be the best-practiced structure by outlining what the goals would become so that IAH can be the

most successful with all resources. This is a critical step to engage their findings and make sure

they act to it by developing effective ways to providing quality of service to their clients and

hopefully filling all the gaps to seniors will their ultimate goal.

» A description of your ideas for improvement based on your research, your

communication with the stakeholder, or other methods. Provide the rationale for the

improvement, as well as examples.

 A goal would be to gather all leadership management team to offer training what a

SWOT analysis is and each department should have their own SWOT analysis as well as for IAH

as a whole. Then each individual employees in each department should be aware of what’s

expected of them so that they can help mold the organization and so that everyone is on the same

page. Once IAH finds the core SWOT analysis of issues it would be best to plan out a goal that is

the foundation of IAH that they want to meet in the next year to potentially three years from

now. The goal to develop the management team to make sure everyone understands new rules

and regulations with IAH’s changes with policies and procedures. Each role of employees should

also be aware of their own responsibilities by providing them with policies and procedures that

match their workflow on a daily basis. After learning more about the organization after

researching IAH, the stakeholder mentioned great points for improving their organization and I

wanted to write my conclusion on my SWOT analysis for IAH.

The strength of Independence at Home is that they already have a vision that they want to

help all seniors to be healthy and independent. The passion that started this non-profit

organization stands strong as they continue to help thousands of seniors on a yearly basis. The

evidence-based survey results will offer that employees are motivated and are compassionate

with the work that they provide to their clients. The strength would be their team and the

organization's core discipline at IAH.

IAH’s weakness is lack of communication skills due to not utilizing all their technology

to the best of their ability. Each employee have computers, but all the databases do not yet speak

with each other which makes it hard for each employee to know who’s doing that unless they

continue to ask other people which means there’s a high chance of duplication of work which

results in lack of finances for the entire organization when these funds could have saved another
seniors life. Delegating the work properly and developing policies and procedures so each

employee is aware of their responsibilities on a daily basis. Eliminating the gap in care of their

programs so that they can offer the best service to serve their mission to the best of their ability.

An opportunity that I see is that there’s no perfect organization or world that we live in as

we can’t fill all the gaps in care that seniors or people go through because of lack of results,

however, there are ways to finding the barriers that their clients go thru as well as what types of

resources their employees are lacking. This is a valuable approach to finding how they can find

these barriers by developing creative strategies whether it’s offering new ways to overcome these

barriers or finding resources to offer clients and to their employees.

Lastly, what types of threats will continue to come by would be that there will be baby

boomers increasing every single year. IAH also has a waitlist at this time that’s approximately 6

months long, but if there are more baby boomers that need help, what does this entail our waitlist

and wait time. Can seniors survive 6 months without help? Or do you have to resource these

clients out to other case management or programs similar to IAH? What would be the best route

so that you don’t lose these clients and offer the best quality of service to patients while you still

lack in resources from a shortage of employees. Where will the financial budgets continue to

kick in. The organization can lose their funds if they don’t keep their SWOT analysis action plan

into works and be evaluating them on a daily basis. If they run out of funds, that means everyone

loses their job and their mission will disappear also many seniors that are in need may not

receive any help or may resort to alternative programs that may not meet their needs.

» An assessment of how the organization can implement your improvement ideas in light of

any social, spiritual, and cultural concerns of the organization

 By evaluating the SWOT analysis for IAH as well as for each department they can

eliminate any threats and encourage more opportunities for the organization as a whole. At times

strategically planning a non-profit organization may be hard as they have to please their

community, but also their stakeholders that they work with and their goals need to be also

possible with other organizations. Cultural and social concerns I can see is that if internal

employees lack resources, they will also portray that type of environment to external

stakeholders and their clients. By developing and evaluating a strong SWOT analysis it can

potentially help the organization make changes to develop on the improvements that need to be

addressed with the Board members at SCAN Health Plan as they fund most of the programs.

When this occurs, would all of these changes for improvement change? I’m sure there’s going to

be backlash and praise at the same time. The leadership team needs to be aware that not everyone

will agree with the strategic plan that they develop for the organization, but they need to be able

to work with Board members, Directors, and other stakeholders to find what the best solution

would be to continue practicing what they believe in.

Also, the changes that they make may not resonate with other clients so where can you

find the middle ground to their program, working with their employees, management team, and

stakeholders. Acknowledging that a strategic plan is to continue following their foundation so

that they can provide that quality service to clients and not forget their mission. Strategies need

to be clear so I would recommend that they can find a more established electronic medical

records systems for IAH where each database can speak with each other so each employee is

aware of the work their peers are establishing. Management should have the ability to develop

policies and procedures easier so that they can offer these tools to their employees so that they

can do their work. IAH as a whole should develop a SWOT analysis that would hopefully
eliminate those concerns of the organization where the culture and social internal environment is

disorganized, hopefully, a solid strategic action plan would help to build their core platform. I

hope that this strategy can allow the culture in their team environment offers a positive vibe so

that they can continue to provide the best care to their community seniors.

» A summary of how strategy changes can help the organization prepare for future growth

and success

A strategic plan will help IAH develop an Action Plan that’ll work best for them by

developing strategies to be the best outcome of their mission into the community. The SWOT

analysis will help identify opportunities and barriers, it’s important to make sure that every goal

that they plan is a SMART goal. A SMART Goal means to be “specific, measurable, attainable,

realistic and time sensitive” (Aghera, 2018). I think it’s important that the plans I’ve mentioned

will help them have a goal each quarter and every year as they continue to grow. Hopefully, IAH

can have a clear understanding of how to communicate their SWOT analysis with management

and to their employees so that they can hopefully eliminate miscommunication. Offering action

plans and goals so that people can have the right resources and tools for themselves and to

provide to their patients. Making sure each individual understands effective communication is a

big part of IAH as they want to provide the positive environment internally and externally to

their clients. Their mission, vision, and values of IAH should continue to be revisited and

documented thoroughly as they continue to change and grow their industry as they follow their

roadmap.
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