Happy Valley Hospital is a
community-based facility with 288 acute care beds, a twelve suite
family-oriented birthing center, a forty four bed long-term care inpatient
facility, and a fourteen bed inpatient rehabilitation unit. Happy Valley has a
major competitor, GH, which has two hundred beds, a small cancer center, and a
kidney dialysis unit.
Happy Valley’s director of
internal medicine, along with the director of nursing for that department, are
considering establishing a new hemodialysis service. GH has a small
hemodialysis unit, but they do not have enough beds to properly accommodate the
needs of this community.
The Happy Valley medical
director has surveyed the six nephrologists with staff privileges at the
hospital and has determined that all six agree that there is a need for more
hemodialysis beds in the community. Moreover, these nephrologists all have
staff privileges at both Happy Valley and GH and would prefer that the new beds
be added to the GH unit. GH, however, has no plans to expand their unit for at
least the next five years, and presently, new patients are being referred to a
dialysis unit in another community thirty minutes south of Happy Valley
Hospital. Those patients as well as their families find this alternative site
and location to be unacceptable.
Based on your understanding of
the above case, express your views on the following:
·
How should the medical
director at Happy Valley try to convince patients now being referred to the
dialysis unit thirty minutes to the south to switch their care to Happy Valley
Hospital?
·
What steps should the Happy
Valley medical director take to ensure that patients will get the proper care
and facilities at the Happy Valley Hospital hemodialysis unit, when it is
established?
·
Is the approach of GH for not
having any expansion plans for the next five years for their unit justified,
keeping in mind the interest of the community? Why or why not?
