Question:
Describe about internal and external assessment before starting a health care program in an organization.
Answer:
Research and precise data is essential to recognize the key concerns in an organization’s environment. For carrying out the internal and external assessments in a healthcare organization one needs to perform the SWOT analysis. SWOT is an abbreviation that may be used to define the specific Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats that are strategic factors for an organization. It represents the core competencies of an organization while also identifying opportunities it cannot currently use to its advantage due to a gap in resources (Kaufman & Guerra-Lopez, 2013).
The internal assessments include the evaluation of strengths and weaknesses. The internal factors that need to be assessed for this include the resources, capabilities, constraints, uncertainties, and problems within the organization. One needs to assess the profitability, relative cost effectiveness, employee capability, program quality, funds available for implementing the program.
The external assessments include the evaluation of opportunities and threats. The external factors that need to be assessed include analysis of community needs, competitive analysis, market analysis, trends, strategic uncertainties, and environmental analysis. The different segments of the community, their motivations and unmet needs have to be assessed. One needs to identify the competitors completely and classify them into strategic groups in order to evaluate their performance and figure out their culture, objectives, strategies, strengths, and weakness. One needs to have an idea about the projected growth, overall size of the market, barriers to entry, distribution system, key success factors, and trends. It evaluates the technical, administrative, financial, ethnic, and demographic scenarios, and information-need areas (van Wijngaarden, Scholten, & van Wijk, 2012).
These assessments will focus on strategically positioning the community health clinic in offering this program and associated services to the community at large. The program may turn out to be a failure in the community if all the factors are not assessed and suitable planning is not done.
References
Kaufman, R., & Guerra-Lopez, I. (2013). Needs Assessment for Organizational Success. American Society for Training and Development.
van Wijngaarden, J. D. H., Scholten, G. R. M., & van Wijk, K. P. (2012). Strategic analysis for health care organizations: the suitability of the SWOT-analysis. The International Journal of Health Planning and Management, 27(1), 34–49. http://doi.org/10.1002/hpm.1032
