Assessment of Banner Health’s Readiness to Meet Citizens’ Healthcare Needs in the Next Decade

Posted: January 5th, 2023

Assessment of Banner Health’s Readiness to Meet Citizens’ Healthcare Needs in the Next Decade

Name:

Institutional Affiliation:

Assessment of Banner Health’s Readiness to Meet Citizens’ Healthcare Needs in the Next Decade

The healthcare industry in the United States is facing numerous challenges that could persist in the future if healthcare organizations do no ready themselves today for tomorrow. Healthcare organizations and systems in the country are under immense pressure to meet high quality health standards and lower the high cost of healthcare, while guaranteeing equitable access to healthcare services across all citizens. Besides, increased patient awareness has forces healthcare establishments to adopt patient-centered strategies to ensure customer satisfaction (Weeks, et al., 2017). In this regard, these organizations need to be continuously creative and innovative to meet the ever-changing needs of customers. However, the changing population demographics, prevalence of existing diseases and emergence of new ones, such as the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, will require the healthcare organizations to anticipate future health demands and prepare for them accordingly, in advance (Iyengar et al., 2020). This assessment focuses on the readiness of Banner Health, a large healthcare organization in the United States, to meet the citizens’ healthcare needs in the next decade. After describing Banner Health, its overall readiness will be assessed, before formulating a strategic plan that addresses its network growth, nurse staffing, resource management, and patient satisfaction. After that, the organizational culture issues that could affect the strategic plan are discussed. Finally, a mode supporting the implementation of the strategic plan is advanced and explained.

Description of Banner Health

Banner Health is a large Phoenix-based healthcare organization with a network of 28 hospitals and other specialized healthcare establishments that are strewn across six states. Following its formation from the merger between Lutheran Health System and Samaritan Health System in 1999, Banner Health has downsized its network of 32 hospitals in 14 states at its initiation to 28 hospitals in six states in western United States currently after offloading its North and South Dakota, Kansas, New Mexico, Minnesota, and Iowa operations in 2001. In contrast, its workforce has expanded from 22,500 employees at inception to the current over 50,000 workers (Banner Health, 2020a). Notably, although its hospital network has shrunk, its network of health centers and clinics has grown.

As one of the leading not-for-profit healthcare organization in the United States, banner health is guided by its vision statement, which states that, “We will be a national leader recognized for clinical excellence and innovation, preferred for a highly coordinated patient experience, and distinguished by the quality of our people” (Banner Health, 2020a). Besides, the organization strives to live its mission statement, which is making health care easier, so life can be better (Banner Health, 2020a). It also has a purpose statement, which states that, “Banner can and will create a new model that answers America’s health care challenges today and in the future” (Banner Health, 2020a). Therefore, the organization strives to achieve its mission through values such as, earning trust continuously, fostering accountability, obsessing on customers, improving relentlessly, having a disciplined focus, and innovating courageously (Banner Health, 2021). These statements of intent provide insights into the direction the organization is moving and the market position it seeks to attain in the future.  

Banner Health’s Overall Readiness

Banner Health proclaims that its mission, purpose and values are anchored in innovation, which will inform the future readiness of the organization currently. In this regard, the organization reinvests its revenues into new technologies, physician services and patient care services. These activities are embodied in its definition of innovation, which is:“emerging and novel ideas that shape the future model of healthcare, earn loyalty and drive strategic growth for Banner Health” (Banner Health, 2020a).

Banner Health is future-proofing its operations by bolstering its readiness today. Specifically, the organization is striving to increase its operational efficiency, lower healthcare costs, and enhance care quality by adopting value-based reimbursement (VBR) models. These models emphasize rewarding value of care rather than volume of patients attended, and shifting clinical and financial risks from the individual payers to the healthcare providers (Kuhn & Lehn, 2015). The revenue cycle management (RCM) solution from Cerner, with which Banner Health is in partnership, facilitates the effectiveness of these value-based models. Specifically, the end-to-end comprehensive suite streamlines and simplifies the experiences of patients and clinicians across the healthcare network, while enhancing population health management at the organization (McGrail, 2020).   

Therefore, Banner Health is leveraging technology to improve patient engagement and care delivery. For instance, the organization has an application (Banner App) for searching urgent care, locating a doctor, finding a nurse on call, paying bills, scheduling appointments, viewing medical records, accessing informative content, and facilitating customer engagement, to supplement its free health care advice calling service and chatbot for patient flow management (Banner Health, 2020b; Dyrda, L. 2020). Besides, the organization has developed a proprietary telehealth program to enhance healthcare access and used the da Vinci Surgical Robot System to improve surgical outcomes and widen surgical options for patients (Banner Health, 2020b). In addition, Banner Health has assured a pipeline of highly talented healthcare professionals that can weather the changing healthcare environment by entering into a 30-year strategic partnership with the University of Arizona (Loria, 2016)

Strategic Plan for Banner Health

The strategic plan that Banner Health should formulate to address a strategic plan to address issues pertaining to network growth, nurse staffing, resource management, and patient satisfaction should emphasize development and adaptation. This means that the strategy should promote the development of its resource reservoir by leveraging and improving the existing ones while acquiring new ones. Similarly, the strategic plan should promote the adaptability of the healthcare network and its human capital to the changing healthcare market environment.

The plan for network growth is to expand and diversify the strategic partnerships between Banner Health and organizations that would add value to the network. These partners should be drawn from sectors that would promote the vertical integration of the network to improve operational efficiencies and keep costs low. Similarly, the quality and quantity of the nursing staff to serve in the expanded network by forging strategic partnerships with nurse training institutions to maintain a stable recruitment pipeline and facilitate continuous professional development for skill upgrading (Angeli & Jaiswal, 2016). Resource management issues at Banner health would be addressed through an interoperable enterprise resource planning systems that is applicable across the network. Such as system would streamline workflows and inter-organizational communication across the network, while providing visibility to the organizational processes for quality and performance monitoring and control    

Likewise, patient satisfaction can be enhanced through increased patient engagement, through face-to-face and technological approaches. The plan is to increase patient empowerment through greater participation in decision-making and research, and information sharing, alongside increased response times to patients’ needs and concerns (Duffett, 2017). Broadened communication channels incorporating innovative digital technologies like artificial intelligence, augmented reality, and social media along with a workforce dedicated to responding to patients promptly would advance the patient-centric strategy and enhance customer satisfaction. 

Current and Potential Organizational Culture Issues at Banner Health

 Banner health has a well-entrenched organizational culture that characterized its DNA (Dyrda, 2020). However, the culture has positive and negative aspects. For instance, the organization has a robust employee and performance recognition system; but it was inconsistent across the numerous healthcare establishments in the network, thus lacking in centralization, cohesion, and predictability. Worse still, the over 6,000 volunteers engaged by Banner Health were not recognized for their contributions, despite it being a nonprofit healthcare organization (O. C.Tanner, 2018). Likewise, the organization has a progressive leader and manager development strategy, although it is hampered by shortages in highly-skilled health professionals. Therefore, inconsistent employee motivation and skill shortages hamper the human capital development aspect of the strategic plan.   

Model to Support Implementation of Strategic Plan

The vision-based planning model, also known as the goal-based planning model would support the implementation of the proposed strategic plan. This model supports the implementation of a futuristic strategy in organizations that have already attended to their current issues (Spurgeon, et al., 2019). In this regard, Banner Health has a robust and active innovative organizational culture that is facilitating the addressing of the current issues in the American healthcare sector, such as healthcare cost reduction, care quality improvement, and patient-focused processes. In this regard, the goal-based planning model would support the implementation of the strategic plan by focusing on the future state of the healthcare network as it addresses future challenges that will be encountered by the American citizens in the next ten years. 

Conclusion

Banner Health is an established and high-performing healthcare organization with a network model that provides diverse healthcare services to Americans across six states. Its innovative organizational culture and diversified health service portfolio have been critical for its exemplary performance and network growth. However, while the organization was evidently ready for the future, it needed to apply the goal-focused planning model to implement a futuristic strategic plan that would help it meet Americans’ healthcare needs in the next decade. 

References

Angeli, F., & Jaiswal, A. K. (2016). Business model innovation for inclusive health care delivery at the bottom of the pyramid. Organization & Environment, 29(4), 486-507.

Banner Health (2020a). About Banner Health. Retrieved from https://www.bannerhealth.com/about.

Banner Health (2020b). Innovation at Banner Health. Retrieved from https://www.bannerhealth.com/about/innovation.

Banner Health (2021). Strong journey. Retrieved from https://strongjourney.bannerhealth.com/banner_vmv.html.

Duffett, L. (2017). Patient engagement: what partnering with patient in research is all about. Thrombosis Research, 150, 113-120.

Dyrda, L. (2020). How a former Target exec transformed innovation at Banner Health. Retrieved from https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/digital-transformation/how-former-a-former-target-exec-transformed-innovation-at-banner-health.html.

Iyengar, K., Mabrouk, A., Jain, V. K., Venkatesan, A., & Vaishya, R. (2020). Learning opportunities from COVID-19 and future effects on health care system. Diabetes & Metabolic Syndrome: Clinical Research & Reviews, 14(5), 943-946.

Kuhn, B., & Lehn, C. (2015). Value-based reimbursement: the banner health network experience. Frontiers of Health Services Management, 32(2), 17-31.

Loria, K. (2016). Bannr Health’s future-focused merger. American Healthcare Leader. Retrieved from https://americanhealthcareleader.com/2016/banner-healths-future-focused-merger/.

McGrail, S. (2020). Banner Health adopts Cerner’s revenue cycle management product. Retrieved from https://revcycleintelligence.com/news/banner-health-adopts-cerners-revenue-cycle-management-product.

O. C.Tanner (2018). Banner Health: Making healthcare easier through a culture of recognition. Retrieved from https://www.octanner.com/insights/articles/2018/12/26/banner_health_making.html.

Spurgeon, P., Sujan, M. A., Cross, S., & Flanagan, H. (2019). Building Safer Healthcare Systems: A Proactive, Risk Based Approach to Improving Patient Safety. Springer Nature.

Weeks, K., Coben, D., Lum, G., & Pontin, D. (2017). Developing nursing competence: Future proofing nurses for the changing practice requirements of 21st century healthcare. Nurse Education in Practice, A3-A4.