Reference no: EM133253437

Assignment - Job Design

Description - Orange County Pediatric Medical Center (OCPMC) had acquired three physician practices in its service area to broaden its ability to provide primary care. Based on its evaluation of the HR and business practices of the three practices, OCPMC was confident that it could reduce the costs of operations at these practices by consolidating and centralizing business activities. The business activities include accounting and finance, HR, billing, pur-chasing and materials management, and facilities maintenance. Additionally, the center would be able to spread the gen-eral costs of administration over the three facilities. After nearly six months of operating the three new acquisitions, OCPMC's financial analysis found that very poor budgetary results had occurred. All three practices were over budget by more than 10 percent, and projections were for even larger financial losses. The most significant budgetary issue was labor costs. In further analyzing the problem, the main issue appeared to be the staffing mix of MDs, RNs, and assistive (nonlicensed) personnel. When the practices were acquired, the staffing mix was a simple com-bination of MDs and nonlicensed medical assistants. When OCPMC took over the practices, it changed the staffing mix to include RNs. This was consistent with the staffing model at the medical center and the other clinics OCPMC currently owned and operated. The budgetary problem was directly related to the increased expense of the RNs' wages.OCPMC decided to evaluate the care delivery processes and the skill sets nec-essary at these clinics to determine if the staffing mix could be changed. The HR de-partment was requested to undertake a job analysis, consider alternative job designs, and make recommendations.

Answer the following questions:

1. Outline the steps that should be taken to evaluate the work at the practices to determine the appropriate staffing mix.

2. What methods of job analysis would be most effective for this assignment?