This paper entails preparing a SWOT analysis based on long-term health care facility. However, the focus would be on the nursing shortage, and patient satisfaction and particularly more attention would be directed towards nursing shortage. Therefore, SWOT analysis entails carrying out an examination of the internal strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for health care and also, the threats from the external environment (Manzano‐García, & Ayala‐Calvo, 2014). The mission of a long-term health care facility is to provide diverse services that include medical and personal care. Mainly, it targets individuals in the society who lack the ability to manage independently. On the other hand, threats are external conditions that can have a negative impact on the goals of a health care facility. Precisely, the paper will look at one threat for each of the following external environment factors. The factors include technology, politics, and competition, regulation, economic and social. The analysis of external environment factors will help to generate new ideas to curb the challenges. Also, it will assist the hospital administrators in achieving their primary goals of addressing the nursing shortage and patient satisfaction.

Threats of the Health Care Facility

Technological factor: The threat under this factor is increased demand for expensive technology. However, these technologies are not cost effective. Both nurses and patients require advanced technologies to secure a healthy operation. In a situation when a health care facility cannot provide for sophisticated technology, then the nurses would find it difficult to work there. It will create nurse shortage since they would like to work in an environment where the flow of information is efficient and always updated.  The technological backwardness poses poor working conditions for nurses. Many hospitals have tried to attract nurses by improving the working environment in terms of technology, but their effort bore no fruit. It is because; the kind of technology they are trying to install does not favor the demand for the nurses and the complexity of the work. Moreover, many health care facilities lack the financial capacity to sustain advanced technology and retain the nurses.

Regulatory factor: One of the threats depicted under this factor is the complexity of documentation resulting from regulatory agencies. The regulatory bodies have set a multitude of action whereby nurses have to fill in much paperwork during their practice time. However, nurses are dissatisfied with the complexity of the paperwork since it leaves them with less time to see their family and attend to the patients. Such situations are likely to lead to nurses leaving direct care positions. Therefore, this would results in the nursing shortage and precisely in acute care settings. Similarly, nurses would not like to work under such restrictions and tiresome practices in the future. Nurses would like to have freedom of spending most of the time with the patients and also their family of which they are denied.

Social factor:  The threat under the social factor is a growing uninsured population. The large population would result in high health care utilization. Also, the incidences of the chronic disease might emerge, and this would pose a challenge to the hospitals. It would be difficult for few nurses to manage a high population of people. Therefore, the changes in the demography signal the need for a good number of nurses. The population pressure and emergence of chronic disease are likely to cause nurse shortage in the future. Also, the situation of the aging population makes it necessary for the need of more nurses. According to the report by Nielsen, Noone, Voss and Mathews, 2013, the elderly population is expected to reduce by 40% between the years 2015-2030. The population changes will limit the accessibility of health care services unless the nurse-patient ratio is changed.

Economic factor: The economic factor is increased the federal budget deficit. When the federal government experiences a shortfall in the budget, then there would be possibilities of nurses getting low income. Also, the government might not increase their salaries. The situation will force most nurses to leave their profession or go to work in private hospitals where the payments are high. Similarly, the high wages demanded by the Registered Nurse (RNs) and other personnel in the nursing department has greatly affected the hospital’s demand for RNs. The public funds many RNs education programs and they cannot increase the graduation of the nurses since the government is incurring a budget deficit. It will act as a long-term threat to the number of nurses demanded to meet the high number of patients. The economic inefficiency of a country would result to inability to attract and retain nurses.

Political factor: The political factor is reduced government reimbursement. When the government reduces the medical reimbursement it gives to the health care sectors; there would be pressure on the physicians. The physicians would incur an increasing cost of running an independent practice, and most of them will get out of Medicare and Medicaid (Nielsen, Noone, Voss, & Mathews, 2013). Similarly, other may decide to leave medicine or join larger organizations. The increasing cost will create the nursing shortage.

Competitive factor: The threat issue under this factor is competition for specialty physicians. Health care facilities compete with one another for doctors who are specialized in certain areas. Therefore, the government hospitals will be much affected since more of the physicians ought to move to private sectors. Additionally, the federal government competes with the international countries for the highly qualified and Registered Nurses (RNs). The competition poses a threat since not all nurses will migrate and come to work in the US. Similarly, when the number of international nurses declines then there will still be a shortage. Therefore, the approach of recruiting international nurses due to competition would not be effective in the long term.

References

Manzano‐García, G., & Ayala‐Calvo, J. C. (2014). An overview of nursing in Europe: a SWOT analysis. Nursing inquiry, 21(4), 358-367.

Nielsen, A. E., Noone, J., Voss, H., & Mathews, L. R. (2013). Preparing nursing students for the future: An innovative approach to clinical education. Nurse education in practice, 13(4), 301-309.

Do you need an Original High Quality Academic Custom Essay?