Teamwork

Paper details
Read Chapter 10 Case Application #1 Rx: Teamwork on page 334 in your textbook. Afterward, answer the
following two questions:
1. How would the way health-care organization managers manage, be different in a team-based model?
2. Explain how roles, norms, status systems, and group cohesiveness might influence the success of a
team-based model.
• You must use at least two quotes from the textbook: (Robbins et al., Fundamentals of Management, ed.
11, 2020) cited properly (including page number)
Rx: Teamwork
Topic: Team-based model
The health-care industry is the fastest-growing sector of the U.S. economy, with annual revenues projected
at over $1.6 trillion (that’s 12 zeroes!). And health care has surpassed manufacturing and retail as the
largest source of jobs in the United States, now employing more than 18 million workers. Many challenges
face the health-care industry, including changing laws/regulations, changing technologies, an aging
population and increase in chronic disease, and labor shortages (physicians and nurses). But the goal is
still the same—efficiently and effectively provide quality (appropriate and timely) health care to patients.
Given the challenges, health-care organizations are looking for better ways to do this. And one way is
through using a “team-based care” approach, which research studies have shown can improve patient
outcomes and reduce costs.
Many hospitals, clinics, and medical practices have adopted this team-based care approach. What does
that entail? A patient receives care from a team of medical professionals who divide up responsibilities for
performing tasks that traditionally would have been done by a person’s primary physician. Although
supervising physicians still manage (oversee) patient care, tasks such as completing prescription refill
requests, adjusting medication dosages, helping manage chronic diseases (e.g., teaching someone
diagnosed with diabetes how to take blood sugar counts and to administer insulin), and other routine tasks
are now done by a team of health-care providers. For instance, at Kaiser Permanente, one of the largest
not-for-profit managed health-care companies in the United States, a new program model called “complete
care” was designed to enable health-care staffers to work together to make sure that no patient concern,
need, preventive action, or matter was missed or overlooked. As one individual described, staffers often
literally chased patients down hallways to get them to schedule needed screenings. But the team approach
is working. After a number of years using this model, research on Kaiser’s team model showed significant
gains in patient medical care across a wide range of standardized measures. Getting to that outcome
wasn’t easy, however. Departments that were accustomed to working on their own now had to work
together. Instead of focusing on their own specialties, a team of specialists now worked together to provide
patients with a well-rounded health-care experience. Physicians had to be retrained to view themselves as
part of a team, supported by other professionals such as nurses, assistants, and other staff. As the healthcare environment continues to be challenging, is teamwork the Rx?
• TEAMING UP for better outcomes