Introduction
Located in Baltimore, Maryland, John Hopkins Hospital, founded in 1889, is a medical and biomedical research facility in the United States. The facility, which also functions as a teaching hospital for the John Hopkins school of medicine, also founded at the same time, enjoys the privilege of being the founder of modern medicine and technology. The Hospital’s philanthropist founder John Hopkins, who died in 1873, set the milestone for John Hopkins Hospital’s millennial success by investing approximately $7 million in its startup (Park & Wenger,2020). The vast land the Hospital occupies, about 13 acres, made its growth and capacity development fast. The current handbook, published in 2019, gives directives on employee conduct to achieve the Hospital’s mission. From the employee’s guide, John Hopkins offers medical treatment, inpatient and outpatient, to over 1 million patients in a year.
Regarding its employees, John Hopkins hospital employs over 1500 workers annually to cater to diverse health issues. The employees are placed in various sectors, including the Blomberg school of public health. School of nursing, medicine, John Hopkins Hospital, homecare group, and ventures. Due to the various designations, John Hopkins employs different professionals depending on their workplace. Nurses’ medical doctors, nutritionists, medical technologists, and pharmacists make up the number of employees at John Hopkins hospital. In carrying out their duties, the organizational culture guides employees on issues that promote excellence; high-quality services result from a supportive corporate culture that promotes employee satisfaction, appreciation, and adherence to the joint commission. The intensity of the recruitment, training, and actual health delivery process has increased John Hopkin’s vulnerability to Human resource risks, necessitating change to the existing provisions in the Hospital’sHospital’s employee handbook.
Specific Risks faced at John Hopkin’s Hospital Within
- Recruitment and Hiring
Concerning the hiring process, John Hopkins hospital is faced with the risks of high turnover rates and staff shortages due to the high patient-staff ratio. Burnout is a norm in the health profession since 38% of medical professionals in the United States quit the health sector for other occupations (Park & Wenger,2020). According to John Hopkins hospital Handbook, the Hospital has only 30,000 employees to attend to over 1 million patients annually. According to the handbook, John Hopkin hospital uses the attendance management policy, which stipulates that employees are only allowed to be present for work if authorized by the human resource manager.
Strict penalties stipulated in the HR601 disciplinary action include pay cuts and working time compensation. Setting harsh conditions on the employees predisposes risks since it can alleviate industrial action by labor movements, which can lead to the depletion of financial assets in the Hospital to curb the employees’ outcry. Even with medical reasons, employees are prohibited by human resource management from being absent for two consecutive shifts, according to the handbook. Mounting pressure on the employees can trigger mental illnesses among the active personnel, leading to increased treatments. Also, insurance givers can legally evade clients’ compensation from the hospital if a staff dies of work-related illnesses. Claims submitted to the patient’s insurers can be quickly down looked at, leading to financial losses amongst the medics through the disposition of their assets. To the hospital, a lack of trust in its employees will therefore lead to
Additionally, John Hopkins hospital is faced with a mitigation risk of replacing the employees; for instance, nurses who quit due to the expensive recruitment process set in the United States, and replacing a single nurse who quit approximated $82,000 (Kumari et al., 2020). The reportedly high cost is due to overtime, onboarding, and recruitment costs. Other medical practitioners’ recruitment costrangefrom$60,00 to $120,000, increasing the Hospital’s chances of insolvency in the event all the staff are laid off (Kumari et al., 2020). Downtime presents a high cost of replacement; human resource management at John Hopkins hospital is required to promote a favorable working environment by revising the policies to include exceptional cases that give the employees the right to rest.
- Terms and Conditions of Employment
John Hopkins hospital employees’ handout strictly stipulates a probationary period as one of the essential tools for newly employed health workers. The handbook stipulates that employees working more than 20 hours a week are subject to 90-day probation before earning permanent employment. On the other hand, employees working less than 20 hours a week are required to wake for 180 days to earn permanent employment. During the probationary period, John Hopkins hospital must terminate employees’ contracts based on performance. The performance is monitored by a single supervisor, who might be biased and give negative reviews on employee performance. To curb biased monitoring, human resource management must employ several supervisors who will give separate review reports and a compilation to determine the employee’s performance before termination.
Multiple evaluations promote integrity and save the hospital from other training costs. The employee handbook does not guarantee employees’ comfort since they are prohibited from resting at the lounges. Staff is the biggest asset, and its comfortability replicates organizational performance and success (Brigham et al., 2021). Revising the resting place policy will ensure that the staff works better and haves mental rejuvenation when delivering health services. The hospital staff’s primary duty is to promote- patients’ well-being. Comfort to the caregivers results in quality healthcare services; hence the resting restrictions need to be removed for health practitioners at John Hopkins Hospital.
- Compensation And Benefits
At John Hopkins Hospital, human resources play a massive role in ensuring employee satisfaction and reducing the chances of burnout in a highly active environment. As it is known, medical practitioners, such as nurses and doctors, quit the health profession to venture into another profession due to high stress in the environment and lack of efficient human resource manager hiring, employee compensations, tax withholding, overtime, and incorrect payment. Work stress occurs due to high patient employment operations, leading to burnout and exposure of hospital staff to quitting, leading to a health crisis and fall. To prevent these risks, John Hopkins hospital needs to look into the employment, pay increase, and wages sector.
Compensation is a vital factor in addressing human resource management risks. Through efficient evaluation, individual employee performance is achieved. With clear records, the highest-performing staff is determined; therefore, fair rewards are necessary to promote equity and enhance motivation. Salary groups need to be implemented based on performance and the work done by the employees. For instance, at John Hopkins Hospital, the research personnel tend to carry out more tedious exercises than the nurses in the home care facilities. The workers ahead are paid differently to promote equity and escape the cases of burnout which promotes mental illnesses among the employees.
- Employee Performance and Evaluation
Performance dictates the advancement from a probationary period to permanent employment at John Hopkins Hospital with the proper evaluation; employees are taken through intensive performance scrutiny to determine their fitness for roles in the Hospital. Termination of a contract is based on the number of patients an employee attends, their views given by the employees, and friendliness to co-workers. In a hospital setting, teamwork is critical; therefore, being a reserved employee makes it the chance of termination. On the other hand, good performance is rewarded with promotions, salary increments, and giving out awards.
- Employee Discipline and Termination
Under the involuntary termination policy, John Hopkins hospital puts poor use of emails as a core reason for contract termination, in conjunction with the use of computers for unintended hospital purposes. Employees are not brought into a fair hearing during the termination. Hence some are subjected to unfair judgment. The hospital handbook does not consider the current increase in cybersecurity crimes and the breach of data privacy ins the current technological era. Dismissing employees without proper investigation can trigger legal action, leading to court proceedings and depleting hospital revenues. Therefore, John Hopkin hospital must follow a plenary method in addressing disciplinary actions, specifically the termination of its employees and as risk prevention measures.
The handbook stipulates that the employees must give a written reprimand after the disciplinary cases are concluded. The written reprimand requires electronic backup in the of natural disasters. An electronic copy is necessary for risks such as theft and fires that will erase the information making the Hospital lose its case to unfit employees. Losing the case means financial compensation to the employees. Dual employment is acceptable at john Hopkins hospital. The chances of having ghost workers are propagated by dual employment, increasing the Hospital’s wage bill.
Why John Hopkin’s Hospital HRM Risks
Human resource management is responsible for the overall growth at John Hopkins hospital due to its effect on employee motivation. Motivation is a product of the state environment to which the worker is subjected. Training is also a critical role played by human resource managers, which determines the performance level since the hiring department is the key promoter of the institution’s mission and vision statement (Jones et al., 2021). At john Hopkins hospital, several patients need inpatient and outpatient services, which the current handbook does not address. The lack of a systematic recruitment program, compensation of the employees, and performance and evaluation program in the human resource department makes John Hopkins vulnerable to risks that would completely paralyze activities. The international standards of operations as a world-class health facility necessitate the human resource department to keenly analyze the potential risks through an intensive risk analysis process to endure service delivery and presented institution losses.
At john Hopkins hospital, the employees in their community range from researchers, nurses, doctors, nutritionists, technologists, and pharmacists. Since it is located near a medical school, students are also part of the employees whose well-being lies on the backs of the resource manager. In its handbook regarding compensation, John Hopkins hospital only addresses the refinance of the production lot. Creating a salary range concerning performance promotes risk from the rest of the employees’ cause risks, which include sabotaging work (Bolcato et al., 2020). Also, the human resource manager can seek legal action against John Hopkins regarding why the Hospital has different salary ranges for people carrying out the same roles. To curb the substantial salary differences, human resource management should create a monitoring group to check on individual performances and reward them using a separate account. Also, giving employees motivation in terms of overtime would reduce the risk of industrial action, which would present john Hopkins as an unjust employer.
Why Recommendations on Risk Prevention at John Hopkins Hospital Are Important
Risk management is a critical factor at John Hopkins hospital since the workers’ lack of standardized overtime pay predisposes mass action and lack of motivation. Rewards for extra work hours are critical to bringing about work balance. Looking for employee satisfaction and appreciation is vital to preventing risks that jeopardize the health facility’s activities. Human resources in the administrative sector are mandated to carry out administrative actions and design systems that promote employee and patient satisfaction, presenting health crises. Human resource risks must be addressed to keep the highly reputable health facility as the most trusted Hospital, and a proper mitigation process must be outlaid. Also, carrying out intensive risk analysis and evaluation processes leads to safeguarding the employees, who are the primary assets in the growth of john Hopkins hospital.
The increased cybersecurity crimes due to the rise of the technological era have complicated the once simple human resource actions, leading to vulnerability to malice in the recruitment ad hiring process, the payment of wages, and operations. Breach of information n John Hopkins would lead to massive losses in reputation, wages, and loss of assets, which would translate into financial risks and insolvency in the long run. Therefore, it is critical to carry out risk management to minimize losses. Like any other organization, John Hopkins hospital faces financial risks due to adopting the risk-bearing model (Bolcato et al., 2020). Currently, the Hospital adopts a bundled payment, an intimate that has increased its vulnerability to financial risks since the model transfers the financial risk to health care providers from the patients.
Financial performance translates to the revenues garnered by an institution have been chances of growth, expansion, and the possibility of reaching its mission and vision. Adopting clinical quality approach in risk management at John Hopkin hospital will also reduce the financial risk, ensuring the employees get their excellent benefits, hence promoting growth and employee motivation. Also, a good risk management process results in an evading legal tussle, both imposed by labor movements or internally by unsatisfied personnel, who call out for industrial action, making the company lose its reputation or quit, paralyzing the health sector.
Conclusion
The human resource department faces numerous risks affecting a company’s growth. At john Hopkins hospital, the health facility presides over recruitment, hiring, and training, which have high risks due to high turnover and shortage of staff in the medical facility. Employees’ satisfaction and performance determine the replacement and contract termination, which are posed to legal actions and might lead to financial instability and insolvency in the institution. To prevent, reduce and mitigate against the risks, revision of the employee handbook is necessary. Giving detailed terms on recruitment, termination procedures, and employees’ conduct will lead to a proper risk management process. John Hopkin, the hospital HR personnel, requires streamlined revised policies to ensure profitability and service delivery.
Reference
Bolcato, M., Rodriguez, D., & Aprile, A. (2020). Risk management in the new frontier of professional liability for nosocomial infection: a review of the literature on Mycobacterium Chimaera. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(19), 7328. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17197328
Brigham, E., O’Toole, J., Kim, S. Y., Friedman, M., Daly, L., Kaplin, A., … & Parker, A. (2021). The Johns Hopkins Post-Acute COVID-19 Team (PACT): a multidisciplinary, collaborative, ambulatory framework supporting COVID-19 survivors. The American Journal of Medicine, 134(4), 462–467.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.amjmed.2020.12.009
Jones, J. A., Siddiqui, Z. K., Callahan, C., Leekha, S., Smyth, S., Preas, M. A., … & CONQUER COVID Consortium. (2021). Infection Prevention Considerations for a Multi-Mission Convention Center Field Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, During the COVID-19 Pandemic. Disaster medicine and public health preparedness, 1–8. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/dmp.2021.210
Kumari, A., Kaur, T., Ranjan, P., Chopra, S., Sarkar, S., & Baitha, U. (2020). Workplace violence against doctors: characteristics, risk factors, and mitigation strategies. Journal of postgraduate medicine, 66(3), 149. https//doi: 10.4103/jpg.JPGM_96_20
Park, S. M., & Wenger, D. R. (2020). Handbook of Pediatric Orthopedics. https: //10.1097/BPO.0000000000001546
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