HLTH 4000 Week 10 Change Communication Plan Example

Telling Nine Representatives, Fourteen Providers and Thousands of Patients About the New Phone Team: A Communication Plan Built Around the People Most Affected

Student Name

Walden University

HLTH 4000: Introduction to Healthcare Management

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Telling Nine Representatives, Fourteen Providers and Thousands of Patients About the New Phone Team: A Communication Plan Built Around the People Most Affected

The Change to Be Communicated

The practice manager has approved the recommendation from last week's decision paper. In six weeks, the patient access team will move from a rotation, in which all nine representatives alternate between the front desk and the scheduling phones, to a partial separation: three representatives assigned to phones, five to the desk and one float who moves between them using a live call queue display. Headsets and the display will be installed in week four. The change affects nine staff members directly, fourteen providers and their office managers indirectly and every patient who calls or checks in. This plan sets out who needs to hear about the change, in what order, from whom and through which channel, and how questions and concerns will be handled. A decision that is communicated badly can fail even if it was the right decision; research on organizational change has long found that many change efforts falter because people affected were not prepared or did not understand why the change was happening (Kotter, 1996).

Who Is Affected and How

The nine representatives are affected most. Their daily work changes, some will spend most of their day on the phones and some will lose the variety of rotating. Some may worry about being assigned to the role they like least. They need to hear first, in person, with time to ask questions.

The lead representative will help assign roles and train the float, so she needs to know before the rest of the team.

The fourteen providers and their office managers are affected indirectly: scheduling calls will be answered by a smaller, dedicated group, and they may notice changes in how quickly urgent add-ons are handled. They need to know what changes for them and whom to contact with problems.

Patients will mostly notice the change only if it works or fails: calls answered more quickly, or not. They do not need an announcement, but the phone greeting and the website should reflect any changes in hours or options.

The billing office and other departments that transfer calls to the scheduling line need to know that transfers now go to the phone team.

Each of these audiences will hear a version of the same message, but at a different depth: the team needs the full reasoning, providers need what changes for them, and patients need only to find the phone answered.

Sequence and Channels

Table 1 sets out the sequence.

Table 1

Communication Sequence for the Phone Team Change

Note. Week 6 is the go-live week.

Why This Order

The representatives hear first, and in person, because they are most affected and because hearing about a change to your own job from someone else is a reliable way to lose trust. The lead hears a few days earlier because she will be asked questions by her colleagues and needs to be able to answer them. Individual meetings follow the team meeting so that people can raise concerns they would not raise in a group, including concerns about which role they will be assigned. Providers hear after the team, so that if a physician asks a representative about the change, the representative already knows. Patients hear only through the systems they use, because an announcement about internal staffing would mean little to them.

A change announced in the wrong order often has to be explained twice, once to correct the rumor and once to deliver the message.

What the Team Meeting Will Say

The team meeting is the most important moment in the plan. I will open with the problem, showing the morning abandonment data the team has seen in monthly reports, and acknowledge that the problem is not the team's fault; it comes from asking the same people to do two jobs at the same moment. I will explain the three options considered and why partial separation was chosen. I will say what is not changing: no one's hours or pay will change, and no position is being eliminated. Then I will explain how roles will be assigned: by preference first, then by skills and schedules, with the float role open to anyone who wants it. Most of the meeting will be questions. People are more willing to accept a change when they understand the reasons and believe their concerns will be heard (Edmondson, 1999).

Handling Questions and Resistance

Questions will be collected in three ways: at the team meeting, in individual meetings and through a shared document where representatives can post questions anonymously, which I will answer in writing each week until go-live. I expect some resistance, especially from representatives who prefer the desk and fear being assigned to phones. I will not treat that as a problem to overcome but as information: if several people dread the phone role, the role may need changes, such as rotating phone staff to the desk for one hour a day. After go-live, I will hold a 15-minute check-in at the end of each of the first five days and a review meeting at four weeks, sharing the abandonment and wait-time numbers with the team so they can see whether the change is working (Hackman & Oldham, 1976).

References

Edmondson, A. (1999). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2), 350-383. https://doi.org/10.2307/2666999

Hackman, J. R., & Oldham, G. R. (1976). Motivation through the design of work: Test of a theory. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 16(2), 250-279. https://doi.org/10.1016/0030-5073(76)90016-7

Kotter, J. P. (1996). Leading change. Harvard Business School Press.