Characteristics of Organizations: St Luke's Health Systems and UCLA Health - Essay Example

"Characteristics of Organizations: St Luke's Health Systems and UCLA Health" is a wonderful example of a paper on the health system.
The presence of a favorable relationship between health care providers, patients, and other stakeholders is imperative for ensuring the delivery of services in the health care field. There are also other factors that influence the experience of patients, health care providers, and other stakeholders such as the vision, mission, and values of a health care organization. This paper gives a comparison of two health care organizations i.e. St. Luke's Health Systems in Kansas City and UCLA health.  and subsequently explicates the possible reasons for differences in the two sets of mission, vision, and values. In addition, this paper describes potential implications of the explicated implications to stakeholders of each organization. Further, this paper elucidates how this informs the focus for nursing.

According to the UCLA Department of Nursing (2014), the mission of this institution is to "Deliver leading-edge patient care, research, and education" (para. 2), its vision is to "heal humankind, one patient at a time, by improving health, alleviating suffering, and delivering acts of kindness" (para. 2), and their values are to "Ensure integrity, compassion, respect, teamwork, excellence, and discovery in the work they do daily" (para. 2). In contrast, as stated in the St. Luke's health system, (2014):

Its mission is to improve the health of people in their region, vision is to transform health care by aligning with physicians and other providers to deliver integrated, seamless, and patient-centered quality care across all St. Luke's settings and values include integrity, compassion, accountability, respect, and excellence (para. 5).

There are potential reasons for the differences in the mission, vision, and values of these two health organizations. One of the reasons is their achievements and letdowns in the past. In other words, the mission, vision, and values of organizations ought to align with their successes. Secondly, the working environment of the organizations is also a potential reason. The fact that UCLA health is located within the University of California, Los Angeles necessitates it to conduct research and education in relation to health issues. On the other hand, St. Luke's is a for-profit health institution located in residential areas hence aims at improving the health of community members.

To the stakeholders, values of teamwork in UCLA health lead to collaboration among healthcare providers, patients, employers in the health care sector, and financiers of health care. Additionally, research and education in relation to health care equip health care providers with effective knowledge and skills necessary for the advancement of care. At St. Luke's health organization, having a mission to improve people's health means all community members are involved and hence improves the general health of the society, and also aligning health care with health care providers helps minimize conflicts between the stakeholders particularly between employers, doctors, and patients, and also medical errors (Wachter and Pronovost, 2009).

Nurses are regarded as the primary caregivers in all health care organizations. According to Abraham and Moretz (2012), "Nurses who consistently partner with patients and families in their daily practice often serve as important role models and mentors to others" (p. 46). This is the role of nurses at St. Luke's health organization as nurses work in collaboration with all members of the community. Abraham and Moretz (2012) further assert that nurses are advocates for the rights of the patients. This is achieved through the acquisition of support from other professions and hence teamwork comes in handy as elucidated in the values of UCLA health. In a nutshell, the mission, vision, and values of health care organizations are structured to align with the environment and precedent achievements of the organizations. These factors also differ from one organization to another.