A Leadership Journey; Professionalization, Scalability and Sustainability in Missionary Hospitals: -The Jubilee Mission Case

Abstract

Jubilee Missionary Hospital, started in 1951 as a poor man’s hospital, has grown steadily in serving the poor and the needy. The growth accelerated since 2004 when it started a medical college and a nursing college; since then it expanded from a 600 bed to a 1600 bed hospital. In 2012 the hospital faced down a nursing strike by the Nurses union, forcing a shut- down of 12 days. The vertical growth in the development of the hospital had with it an emerging crisis which was the outcome of the hospital’s inability to manage its Finance in tune with accountability in operations and Management. Occupancy began to decline, and the lack of professional management practices exacerbated the challenges.

Management brought in a new CEO who was tasked with professionalizing management practices. The new CEO began to transform the Institution: the challenges were tremendous: (a) the CEO of the hospital had always been from the clergy and this was the first time in the hospital's history of 63 years that a lay person occupies that chair; (b) revenue shortages were exposed in areas that should have been strong revenue generators, like pharmacy, auxiliary services and reviewing possibility for prevention of unaccountable loss in areas like power consumption (c) lack of appropriate Budgetary control system (d) strategic planning had neither a mission nor a vision statement to guide action and (e) the list goes on and on..

The new CEO began by establishing a cordial working relationship with prior administrators who belonged to the clergy. The revenue shortages were stopped by process reengineering for the 'claims processing unit' and pharmacy operations. For the first time, a budget was created and departments knew what they would be accountable for. Workable mission, vision and value statements were created by involving all stakeholders; this in turn led to a strategic plan, including a suitable organizational structure and new ventures to add revenue sources. Furthermore, competency based HR practices were instituted.

The general method for many of the operational changes was to treat the CEO’s staff as an incubation center and then transitioning the operations to the proper departments. This was done by using PMOs for each of the top management initiatives to incubate a process under the guidance of the CEO. Not every project was a success, and this incubation team learned from the failures.

Having made a significant dent in the problems that beset Jubilee, the CEO will now continue the improvement processes to guide the seven institutions under the Jubilee umbrella to go beyond remedial work and to become a powerful force in healthcare sector or more specifically HEALTH for the poor.