That Hospital Might be Dying

In 2018, I offered to do a facility review for a private hospital in Ilorin. The facility has been in operation for over three decades. However, of recent, things were not going on smoothly with the facility. The facility has been having challenges maintaining its staff coupled with significant fall in the client and revenue base.

Following a discussion which lasted for about twenty minutes with the Medical Director, an elderly man in his early 70’s, one thing was obvious; the hospital was dying.
This kind of scenario is similar to what obtains in several hospitals in Nigeria including the Government owned.

Organisation death is a gradual process with tell-tale signs often non visible to a non-observing eye. In most organisation life cycle model, organisation decline is an integral stage. Weitzel and Jonsson (1989), proposed a model that defines organizational decline. In the model, the declining organization moves through five stages:

1) The organisation is blind to the early stages of decline;
2) It recognises the need for change but takes no action;
3) It takes action, but the action is inappropriate;
4) It reaches a point of crisis; and
5) It is forced to dissolve

The stages of organisation decline can be slow spanning years. The advantage of this is that it gives room for intervention if picked up early and appropriate recovery plan implemented.
So here are four things that might suggest if a hospital is dying:
 

1) Increasing commitment towards volume over value
2) Diminishing drive for innovation
3) Fall in staff commitment to the hospital’s vision and goals
4) Loss of best employees

In conclusion, routine evaluation of the overall health of an organisation is essential to its long term sustainability.