Responsibilities of operations management executives in a hospital

Before we jump into the role and responsibilities of operations management executive, we need to understand who he is.

Who is an operations management executive?

An operations management executive is a talented professional who acts as an intermediary between the staff of the hospital and those who are being served i.e patients.

He manages the medical staff, the non-medical staff, the functioning of facilities in the hospital while ensuring the financial well-being of these facilities. He is also the one who implements policies and ensures everything is in accordance to his implemented policies.

In a nutshell, his job is to ensure smooth functioning of the health care facilities at various levels in the hospital.

What are the responsibilities of operations management executive?

Here are 10 essential responsibilities of operations executive which makes their role vital in hospital premises.

1. Implementing Policies: The operations management executive must come up with detailed & effective policies that are in favour of the patients, the staff and the healthcare facilities. He must also ensure these rules and regulations are always adhered to.
2. Ensuring Safety: This is one of the major reasons to implement policies. It helps to ensure the safety of patients from mismanaged facilities and other possibilities.
3. Managing health services: An operations executive examines and ensures the smooth functioning of the facilities and services of a health care centre.
4. Managing staff: An element of managing health services is to manage the staff. An operations management executive supervises the staff while ensuring each member is assigned only the responsibilities they are capable of. They also keep evaluating the staff regularly.
5. Communicating with people: An operations management executive can do nothing without properly communicating with his medical and non-medical staff. He is also required to communicate with patients, doctors, and other managers at times.
6. Assessing Problems: An operations management executive might have to face several problems in a single day of management. These may be staff-related, equipment related, or patient-related. An operations management executive must be able to resolve them while keeping everyone’s best interest in mind.
7. Decision Making: Understanding and resolving problems involves making decisions. Oftentimes, these decisions have to be quickly made, yet ensuring the best results. After all, the healthcare industry has no place for wrong misfit decisions.
8. Creating Reports: It is the responsibility of the operations management executive to forward the daily logistics regarding staff, equipment, and other things to the higher authority. The manager also needs to create reports of long term effects of all these logistics that he is gathering on the healthcare facilities.
9. Collecting data: Creating reports and finding innovative ways to improve services for patients involves the collection of significant data. An operations manager must be adept at garnering and analysing such data.
10. Manage Equipments: It is the operations management executive’s responsibility to regularly check on equipments. His responsibility is to get failing, and outdated medical equipment replaced. Also, he must ensure an adequate supply of medical resources for the staff to make use of.

What soft skills make a great operations management executive?

With monumental responsibilities of operations management, an executive needs to develop certain soft skills. These are:

• Stress Managemnet
• Organisation
• Collaboration
• Delegation
• Communication
• Problem Solving
• Flexibility
• & Positivity

The Bottom Line

The responsibility of an operations management executive is to ensure that the patients get the best service. For this, he has to take proper care and ensure smooth functioning of all administrative aspects of departments like the OT, Diagnostics, OPD, IPD, etc. He needs to make sure everything from appointment scheduling to managing beds for patients, from billing to delivery of patients reports, everything happens at a quick pace in the best possible way.

It is their job to think of innovative processes that will speed up healthcare facilities in the hospital while keeping in good terms with patients, doctors, nurses, and other staff.

Be it the operation of inpatient services or outpatient services, it is the responsibility of the operations management executive to make sure everything happens smoothly, without waste of resources. His job is to breakdown the challenges faced by the hospital and patients, and then find efficient solutions that will close that gap.

In simple words, he has the responsibility of running all healthcare operations flawlessly.