Business Contol and Measuring Performance

1

Introduction

With today's rapid healthcare reforms, the O&P practitioner's ability to quantify the quality of healthcare delivery and treatment cost-effectiveness is seminal to the future success of clinical practice. The evolution of total quality management in the manufacturing sector created concepts of quality control procedures. Today medical orthotics and prosthetics private practitioners assess and use outcomes measures as the principal mode of quality evaluation of healthcare delivery. All this thanks to the ever increasing amount of practitioners that enrol in the B.Tech Degree enabling them to improve on their professional capabilities in O&P practice.

The future of successful patient management (Fig. 1) will require routine control processes in the form of, good skills and abilities as a manager/supervisor, enough resources at your disposal, good organisational skills and motivation and commitment.

rehabilitation.

Figure 1: A whole set of factors feed into the likely success of a patient rehabilitation. (www.allaboutbusiness.com)

The O&P practice can benefit from objective documentation, data collection and outcomes measures if these tasks are performed in a routine and uniform manner; these practices can improve patient evaluation and measurement, aid in selecting the most appropriate appliances, help negotiate provider contracts, reinforce ethical practice management and minimize the risk of litigation.

Why is control so important? Planning can be done, an organisational structure can be created to efficiently facilitate the achievement of goals, and employees can be motivated through effective leadership. Control is important, therefore, because it's the final link in the management functions. It's the only way managers know whether organisational goals are being met and, if not, the reasons why. The specific value of the control function, however, lies in its relation to planning and delegating activities.

An effective control system ensures that activities are completed in ways that lead to the attainment of the organisation's goals. The standard that determines the effectiveness of a control system is how well it facilitates goal achievement. The more it helps managers achieve their organisation's goals, the better the control system.

2

Setting the right goals to measure against

Before I can discuss these steps, it’s logical that control can only be implicated if certain standards of performance already exists. These standard of performance are evidently detailed in goals that are created in the planning process. Goals are used as a benchmark to measure performance against, thus I will have to look at the specific goals in Orthotics and Prosthetics private practice.

Goals are the foundation of planning. Goals give specific direction to managers. However, just stating goals or having employees accept stated goals is no guarantee that the necessary actions to accomplish those goals have been taken. The specific value of the control function, however, lies in its relation to planning and delegating activities.

Figure 2: The Planning - Control link

as described in the four basic functions of management.

(http://gmx.xmu.edu.cn)

As the old saying goes, "The best-laid plans often go awry." The effective manager needs to follow up to ensure that what others are supposed to do is, in fact, being done and that goals are, in fact, being achieved. In reality, managing is an ongoing process, and controlling activities provide the critical link back to planning (Figure 2). If managers didn't control, they'd have no way of knowing whether their goals and plans were on target and what future actions to take.

2.1: Goals setting and the value to an organisation

The words bring back the memory of my Primary school teacher who wanted the class to become better organised students. It's easy to think of goal setting as unnecessary and somehow demeaning. After all, O&P’s have the intelligence and cohesiveness to function in day-to-day business. Why set goals formally?

Russell, M (2007) suggests that there are a number of advantages to formally setting goals and writing them down. First and