The torrent of reported operational missteps, medical malpractice and organizational disregard for the veterans’ dignity has made addressing the failure of the vast bureaucracy of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to deliver accessible and high quality health care services a “first 100 days” priority for President-elect Donald J. Trump.
The myriad of reform suggestions range from “draining the swamp” via a complete overhaul of the VA’s administration and management processes to the more dramatic option of privatization of VA’s health care services. As a former chief executive officer with a career of turning around academic medical centers and health systems, I proffer that reforming the VA will only succeed through a commitment
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He meant that each day organizations have moments of decision-making. I believe that it behooves the incoming VA leadership to begin its reform process by choosing the fork in the road leading to a new culture of engaging excellence.
What is engaging excellence? It is a personal, professional and organizational philosophy that mandates that a positive environment is created where all perform with a commitment to excellence in work and service. More specifically, “engaging” is an undertaking that occupies the entire organization’s attention to immerse in a state of “excellence”, a lofty state of being far above and beyond the normal personal, professional or organizational experience.
It is important to note that too often organizations fall short in adopting a culture of engaging excellence because they either fail to acknowledge the role of excellence or they confuse engaging excellence with reaching a state of organizational nirvana where all operational and financial objectives must be perfectly met in order to meet certain bonus levels. VA’s leadership should be reminded that Engaging excellence is not a search for perfection. In fact, Voltaire, the French writer and philosopher said “le mieux est l’ennemi dubien” – the perfect is the enemy of
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It is leadership’s role to provide the tools to properly navigate the road to engaging excellence beginning with a focus on personal and organizational introspection that includes a self- examination, self-observation – even a bit of soul searching of organizational and personal values, goals and aspirations.
With an inventory of engaging excellence values in hand, VA team members will be inspired to take action. While there may be no objective manner to describe the phenomena of inspiration, it is quite reasonable to accept a basic premise that we are all capable of stimulating our intellect or emotions to bring forth an idea, a moment of art, an act of kindness or a truth communicated. Introspection and inspiration leads us to inventiveness and imagination. With committed leadership, VA team members will create; will invent; will produce; will communicate; and will achieve in support of a culture of engaging
The mission statement of the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) is, “To fulfill President Lincoln's promise ‘To care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan’ by serving and honoring the men and women who are America’s vete...
The DVA provides the highest quality ensuring that all veterans and families receive the care and support they deserve by using people-centric, result-driv...
Throughout this book, author Robert Welch demonstrates values of compassion, caution, and knowledge. These values interweave in Welch’s explanations of how the healthcare system of this country has so much money invested in it, and yet, manage patients receive so little care. This country has a healthcare system that is currently operating out of a broken model that does not place value on individual health, but on profit incentive.
During the study of various reforms that were proposed and denied, both the GOP and Democrats attempted to find a balance that would guarantee the success of their proposals. Years of research, growing ideologies, political views and disregard for the country's constitution sparked an array of alternatives to solve the country's healthcare spending. The expenditure of US healthcare dollars was mostly due to hospital reimbursements, which constitute to 30% (Longest & Darr, 2008). During the research for alternatives, the gr...
No one across the board was being mindful of the 1,7000 patients waiting for an appointment that was never really going to happen. For years no one said hey, this isn’t right what where are doing here or there is a problem that we need to address. The employees did not have the voice to speak up about the wrong doings within the VA. It wasn’t until a few whistleblowers came out that attention was brought to the VA. By being dishonest about the veterans who were not really listed on the EWL, shows disrespect to them the veterans. When the VA decided to do this is they did not have in mind the effect it would have on the veterans waiting, thus leading to several deaths that could have been avoided with proper adherence. Communication was lost somewhere within the VA when the problems started to arise and the back log got over whelming. The problems were swept under a rug and then covered up instead of coming together and looking for a solution. No one showed tenacity during this time either, it seems as if everyone nearly turned a blind eye instead of addressing the real issues with in the VA. The VA’s mission statement is “To fulfill president Lincoln’s promise “To care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan” by serving and honoring the men and women who are America’s Veterans”(Robins, 2013). Judging by the actions of the VA in early 2000’s this mission statement was not on everyone’s mind when these mishaps were
McGuire, J., Clark, S., Blue-Howells, J., & Coe, C. (2013). An inventory of va involvement in
Many organizations have developed written statements known as Mission and vision statements, which support employee performance and motivation strengthening the organizations culture and helping reach goals. Some organizations promote high performance restructuring by dedicating the introduction of a team approach to work structuring, and high skill variety and feedback on performance, which results in job characteristics and improved satisfaction. Organizations nowadays are forced to pay extra attention to their employees’ needs and customers’ needs by means of employee recognition, goal alignment and work force engagement. For teams to be engaged and effective, members must feel appreciated, and believe in their leaders (Dixion & Hart, 2010). Organizational culture obtained with Path-goal theory is equivalently important because appropriate culture is required to sustain or facilitate established high performance efforts. With high employee performance and goal alignment organizations use management by objective (MBO) an integrative approach for management that supports the attainment of customer satisfaction through wide variety of tools and procedures that the end result will be higher quality of goods and services achieving business excellence (Evans J
Veteran’s healthcare has recently been the subject of much discussion within American political circles. However, most ordinary Americans know little of this burning issue. Although support for veterans has risen to its highest levels compared to other times in American history, veterans need more than support to survive; they ne...
In 1636 the “Pilgrims passed a law which stated that disabled soliders would be supported by the colony.” (VA History) This paved the way for veterans’ benefits and healthcare. It wasn’t until 1811 that the federal government authorized the first medical and domiciliary facilities along with benefits and pensions for the veterans and their families. When the United States entered World War 1 in 1917, Congress created a new system for veterans’ benefits such as disability compensation, insurance, vocational rehabilitation. These benefits were directed by three different agencies in the Federal Government, these branches were the Veterans Bureau, the Bureau of Pensions of the Interior Department, and the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers. Ten years later congress authorized the president to “consolidate and coordinate Government activities affecting war veterans”; this action united the three component agencies into bureaus under the veterans’ administration. In the following six decades there were vast increases in the veteran population, and new benefits enacted by congress for veterans following Wo...
Former President Bill Clinton introduced a Health Security Proposal in 1993, which was his attempt for a fundamental reform of the American healthcare system (Longest, 2010). In January of 1993, Clinton announced that he would be putting together a team of experts to review the issue of health care cost and develop a plan to propose to congress (Bok, 1998). On September 22, 1993, Clinton then made a speech to Congress announcing this new health plan (Bok, 1993). In his speech, Clinton urged law makers to “Fix a health care system that is badly broken, giving every American health security-health care that is always there, health care that can never be taken away” (Bok, 1993). He also mentioned in his speech that health care was uncertain and too expensive, too wasteful and too bureaucratic- “It has too much fraud and too much greed” (Rample, 2009).
Leadership at times can be a complex topic to delve into and may appear to be a simple and graspable concept for a certain few. Leadership skills are not simply acquired through position, seniority, pay scale, or the amount of titles an individual holds but is a characteristic acquired or is an innate trait for the fortunate few who possess it. Leadership can be misconstrued with management; a manager “manages” the daily operations of a company’s work while a leader envisions, influences, and empowers the individuals around them.
Although there are many outstanding, albeit necessary qualities of a good leader, it is the leader’s beliefs in which greatness is given its first breath, fostered by action, and spread throughout the institution. A great leader believes in encouraging, not destroying; in setting the precedence instead of yielding to prominence ; in collaboration, not division; in giving, not taking; and in having high standards and volunteering to be the first of many to be held to them. A great leader does not take advantage of the people being lead, but instead, creates an advantage for the people by giving them the opportunities to lead. Only when people take ownership of an institution will passion be cultivated, action be taken, and greatness be achieved.
To become a truly effective leader, one must encapsulate the various behaviors related to the aforementioned course learnings in his/her persona and demonstrate such behaviors daily. This course has allowed me to identify four behaviors that all leaders must portray to be effective. The first of which is that a leader must be inspirational. To do so, a leader must set the appropriate vision and direction for the organization and provide a path to achieving defined goals. Additionally, a leader must induce the proper levels of motivation so that each employee has sufficient incentive to work towards the organization’s goals. As discussed in the class, motivation can be accomplished by factors such as rewarding hard work and providing the correct opportunities to employees. While these are motivating in that employees desire to be fairly compensated and to be doing work they deem valuable, inspiration comes more from organizational culture. A leader will be inspirational by setting a tone that appreciates each employee’s contribution, no matter how small in scale it is. Further, employees are inspired when they work collaboratively in a group setting and can capitalize on individual strengths to drive organizational goals.
I don't beleive that I will be able in this paper to present a miracle proposal that will solve a long lasting and significantly challenging problem that left many of our policy maker gurus baffled. The purpose of this paper is to present some ideas that I believe, as a healthcare provider, will complement the Obama care plan.
Leadership is a function of personal and professional qualities (retrospection), the conception of a vision, structure and satisfying a sense of collective purpose, and make sure carrying out, with strategy and culture as two situational or contextual factors (cannon,2004; gil,2006)