Hospital Administrators

Consider the following Hill Country Community Hospital case study:

Hill Country Community Hospital is a 100-bed acute-care facility in rural Texas. The hospital has served the local community for over 40 years but has experienced financial decline over the past 3 years. Hospital administrators believe that the best way to cut costs is to terminate all contracts with staff physicians and allow a large, Dallas-based physician group to take over in-hospital patient care. The move would quickly solve the current budget crisis, even enabling the hospital to show a profit for the fiscal year.

However, community residents are strongly opposed to the plan, as they have always been accustomed to receiving in-hospital care from their family physicians. The proposed move is creating public relations problems, both with external and internal audiences.

Employees are also highly resistant to the change, as they fear that their jobs may also be outsourced, and that bringing in outsiders to provide patient care will ruin the hospital’s reputation. This is creating emotional labor, poor morale, and increased patient complaints.

As a first step toward overcoming resistance to change, experienced practitioners will identify the types and sources of resistance. Next, they will use strategies based in OD theories and models to guide their client company through the resistance to change. Consider how the theories and models you have read about would be relevant to this case study and how they would aid you in guiding this organization to reestablish homeostasis.

Submit a 2- to 3-page paper written in APA format and style in which you assess how change models can be applied to the Hill Country Hospital case study. In your assessment identify and discuss two theories and two models related to change resistance. As you reflect on the Hill Country Hospital case study, explain the theories you observe and how you would implement one—or both—of the change models you identified to help this organization reestablish homeostasis. Provide a brief discussion of how you might evaluate the efficacy of your interventions. Include in your response why evaluation is important to the process.