Richard C. McKinnies

Employee satisfaction and employee retention: catalysts to patient satisfaction.

Over the last few years, most health care facilities have become intensely aware of the need to increase patient satisfaction. However, with todays more consumer-driven market, this can be a daunting task for even the most experienced health care manager. Recent studies indicate that focusing on employee satisfaction and subsequent employee retention may be strong catalysts to patient satisfaction. This study offers a review of how employee satisfaction and retention correlate with patient satisfaction and also examines the current ways health care organizations are focusing on employee satisfaction and retention.

A Ministudy of employee turnover in US hospitals.

A ministudy was conducted to collect self-reported employee turnover rates in US hospitals. The results indicate many hospitals are struggling with high employee turnover rates. Widespread variances in ratings were observed across hospitals, which may be due to lack of consistency in how they each calculate their employee turnover. This makes benchmarking for the purposes of performance improvement challenging.

Chief executive officers in US hospitals: a reexamination of workforce demographics and educational issues.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the “employment of medical and health services mangers is expected to grow by 22% from 2010 to 2020” (http://www.bls.gov.ooh/management/medical-and-health-services-managers.htm#tab-6). The US Bureau of Labor Statistics notes this is substantially faster than the national average for other occupations. Information from this report finds its way into popular media, news shows, and other information outlets, which increases the number of prospective applicants to college and university health care management programs. (For the purposes of this article, no differentiation is made between various programs geared toward preparing health care managers; this includes, but is not limited to, degrees in hospital administration, hospital services administration, health care management, etc.) In 2007, the authors conducted a survey of chief executive officers in US hospitals that sought to identify educational and demographic information of individuals holding top management positions in US health care institutions. The survey was repeated in 2012, at the 5-year interval, to determine if chief executive officer information had changed.

Hospital Chief Executive Officer Perspectives on Health Care Administration Academic Preparations

A dynamic health care industry continues to call upon health care leaders to possess not one but multiple competencies. A post hoc review of 3 secondary data sets (previous parallel surveys administered in 2007, 2011, and 2015) was conducted to determine what preferred academic program of study (master of health administration, master of business administration, or a clinical degree preparation) may exist by current hospital executives and potential trending of executive degree preparations over time. In addition, any relationships among individual hospital administrator, individual personal characteristics, and their preferred degree preparations were also investigated at an exploratory level. Findings suggest and support the researchers’ hypothesis that the preferred degree preference for a career in hospital administration (master of business administration, master of health administration, or clinical) is highly dependent on an individual executive’s graduate degree earned. Many areas for future research are identified from this study that include additional survey analysis and future research questions related to initial findings.

A Trend Analysis of Succession Planning in Health Care as Perceived by Chief Executive Officers in US Hospitals.

A study was conducted to analyze the perceptions of chief executive officers in US hospitals regarding leadership development and succession planning. Results of the study were compared to identical surveys delivered in previous years for the purposes of identifying possible trends and changing perspectives related to how executives use succession planning in their facilities, what factors influence the identification of successors, what positions are the more likely to use succession planning efforts, and who specifically should be responsible for building the leadership pipeline.

Leadership Characteristics for Health Care Managers: Perspectives of Chief Executive Officers in US Hospitals.

A study was conducted to determine the perceptions of chief executive officers in US hospitals regarding the most important characteristics aspiring health care executives should possess. The results of this 2012 study were compared with a previous study conducted in 2007 to determine if the perceptions had changed over time.

Succession planning: trends regarding the perspectives of Chief Executive Officers in US hospitals.

A study was conducted to revisit the perceptions of chief executive officers in US hospitals regarding the origin of leadership and how they felt about internally developed successors versus externally recruited successors. Furthermore, the study sought to develop understanding of how this group of executives utilizes the succession planning process, what factors impact successor identification, what positions are applicable for succession planning activities, and who is ultimately held responsible for leadership continuity within the hospital industry. The results of this 2012 study were compared with a previous study conducted in 2007 to determine if the perceptions had changed over time.