Running head : WEEK FOUR ASSIGNMENT

Week Four Assignment

Antdrone R. Randolph
MHA 626 Strategic Planning & Marketing in Health Care
Ashford University
Instructor Cynthia Davis
Monday December 1, 2014

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A SWOT analysis is designed to help identify several areas of a business that may need
improvement and other areas where the company may be able to improve upon. SWOT is an
acronym for; Strength, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats. A company should consider this
analysis to be one of the most important steps to becoming one of the leaders of this nature in the
area. This report will conduct a SWOT analysis on the Ochsner Medical Center located in
Jefferson, LA. To begin, a quick synopsis of Ochsners background and history will be given.
The Ochsner Medical Center is considered as the flagship of the Ochsner Health System,
the non-profit hospital was founded by Dr. Alton Ochsner, opening as "Ochsner Clinic" on
January 2, 1942.Ochsner Medical Center is located near uptown New Orleans and includes acute
and sub-acute facilities; centers of excellence Ochsner Cancer Institute, Ochsner Multi-Organ
Transplant Center and Ochsner Heart and Vascular Institute. Ochsner employs over 600
physicians in 80 medical specialties and subspecialties (Nulty, 2013). As a 771-bed acute care
hospital, it offers the opportunity to learn and provide patient care at a Magnet facility with three
Centers of Excellence, all the while gaining exposure to complex medical cases. This campus is
also one of six training sites in the world for robotic surgery and is nationally-renown for many
skilled physicians. This Ochsner campus has been consistently rated one of the US' best hospitals
by US News. This report will now conduct a SWOT analysis on the Ochsner Medical Center,
focusing first on the strengths of the hospital (Ochsner Medical Center, 2010).
As mentioned, the Ochsner Medical Center is the flagship hospital of the Ochsner Health
System that has now evolved into the largest private not-for-profit healthcare system in the
Southeastern region of Louisiana, encompassing eight hospitals and more than 38 neighborhood
health centers. So, there are an abundance of strengths that gives this center many competitive
advantages over other hospitals in the area. First, this particular center is the largest medical

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center in the area holding 771 beds. Competing hospitals in the area hold, at most, an average of
250-400 beds. The medical staff at this center are very experienced seeing on average over
34,000 admissions and 119,000 visitors to the emergency center each year. Ochsner has the
capital to invest in technological advances in medical procedures including robotic surgery.
Ochsner is also considered as a teaching hospital. It is one of the largest non-university based
physician training centers in the nation with over 200 Ochsner-sponsored medical residents, over
300 medical residents from affiliated residency programs, over 600 medical students, and 400
allied health students annually(Clark,2010).
In regards to weaknesses, there are not many that can be found within the Ochsner
Medical Center. One of the main weaknesses based off of testimonials from employees with in
the center is middle level management. Many have the opinion that management can sometimes
be very inefficient in their communication and leadership skills. Another weakness, based on the
opinions of some patients and visitors, are the extended wait times within the emergency care
section of the hospital. Since the hospital is the most well-known in the area, the ER sees about
119,000 visitors per year. But for various reasons, this section of the hospital is not effectively
staffed to facilitate these many visitors, resulting in long wait times. These main weaknesses can
be used as opportunities to improve the quality of medical care given at the hospital.
There are many opportunities that are the Ocshner Medical Center can take advantage of
in order to become more of an industry leader in medical healthcare. The hospital could focus
more on investments in medical technology to help increase quality and decrease costs.
Examples of these new technologies are self-service kiosks, real-time locating services that are
able to track medical equipment and even clinical staffing within the facility, and home
monitoring services (Howren, Van Liew & Christensen, 2013). Being part of a larger health

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system, the Center also has more opportunities for facility expansion in its particular location.
The Center is located in an area that is outside of the metropolitan section of the city, complete
with many open spaces and vacant commercial properties. Ochsner could buy out some of these
building and construct new buildings, to address some of its needs, like a larger emergency room
section.
There are not many threats to the Ochsner Medical Center that could be considered. Since
the center is now a part of a larger health system as are most in the country, they are immune to
many of the potential threats that would ordinarily effect an individual hospital. One of the
threats to Ochsner is the enactment of the Affordable Care Act, which is in favor of funding
smaller health clinics and centers. These smaller centers could eventually begin to chip away at
the number of patients seen by Ochsner. Other threats are those posed from other, competing
hospitals in the area that are part of competing health systems. Oschner is not the only health
system in town. Even though these other health systems are smaller in comparison to Ochsner,
over time they could become larger and more powerful, possessing the potential to not only
compete for patients with Ochsner, but to eventually acquire the Ochsner Health System as a
whole.

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References

Bryant Howren, M., Van Liew, J. R., & Christensen, A. J. (2013). Advances in Patient
Adherence to Medical Treatment Regimens: The Emerging Role of Technology in
Adherence Monitoring and Management. Social & Personality Psychology Compass,
7(7), 427-443. doi:10.1111/spc3.12033
Clark, M. A. (2010). Rebuilding the past: health care reform in post-Katrina Louisiana. Journal
of Health Politics, Policy & Law, 35(5), 743-769. Doi: 10.1215/03616878-2010-026
Nulty, P. (2013). HEALTH. Louisiana Life, 34(1), 16.
(2010). Ochsner Medical Center Only Louisiana Hospital Ranked Top 5% in Nation. Blood
Weekly.