MMHA 6111 Week 4 Change Urgency Case Paper Example

The Case for Consolidating Imaging: A Problem Staff Can Verify, a Date the Organization Set and What the Change Is Not

Student Name

Walden University

MMHA 6111: Leadership and Organizational Change

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

The Case for Consolidating Imaging: A Problem Staff Can Verify, a Date the Organization Set and What the Change Is Not

Introduction

This installment opens the change plan for consolidating the composite Westside Imaging Center, a satellite outpatient site, into the hospital's imaging department. It makes the case for the change. Kotter places creating a sense of urgency first among his eight steps, and warns that many change efforts fail because complacency is underestimated (Kotter, 2012). But urgency built on alarm, warnings about industry disruption or vague threats to the organization, tends to produce anxiety rather than commitment. This case instead frames the consolidation as a problem staff can verify from their own working week, anchors its timing to a date inside the organization and says openly what the change is not about. All figures are illustrative.

The Problem

The two imaging sites duplicate each other in ways that every technologist, scheduler and radiologist at both sites already knows. Table 1 sets out the duplication.

Table 1

Duplication Between the Two Imaging Sites (Illustrative)

What Happens if Nothing Changes

If nothing changes, the pattern in Table 1 continues. Westside's CT scanner will keep failing until it is replaced, and every failure means rebooking patients to the hospital, which the hospital's schedulers already do several times a year. Replacing it would cost about $1.2 million, illustrative, for a scanner whose volume the hospital's two CT scanners could absorb. Hospital outpatients will keep waiting about twelve business days for MRI while Westside's MRI has open afternoon slots that patients cannot easily reach, because the two sites schedule separately. Referring offices will keep calling two numbers. Technologists at Westside will keep covering a separate on-call rotation for a site with one technologist per modality, which means a sick call often leaves a modality closed for the day. None of this is a crisis, which is precisely why it has continued: each problem is small, and staff have learned to work around it.

Why Now

The timing rests on a date the organization already faces. Westside's lease ends on June 30, and the lease requires six months' notice of non-renewal, so a decision must be made by December 31. Renewing would mean signing a five-year commitment and replacing the CT scanner, locking in the duplication for at least five more years. Not renewing gives the organization a natural point to combine the sites. This is the urgency: not that the industry is changing, but that a decision is coming due regardless of what the organization wants, and that choosing to renew is also a choice.

What the Change Is Not

The consolidation is not a reduction in staff. Every Westside technologist and front desk employee will be offered a position in the hospital department at the same pay and seniority; the combined department will need them, because it will absorb Westside's volume. It is not a reduction in outpatient imaging; the same exams will be available, and MRI capacity for outpatients will increase. And it is not a judgment on Westside's team, whose work has kept a small site running well with limited equipment. Saying these things plainly matters because staff will otherwise fill the silence with the worst interpretation, and research on how employees respond to change finds that perceived threats to job security and trust in management strongly shape their reactions (Oreg et al., 2011).

What Staff Will Lose

The case should not pretend the change costs staff nothing. Westside's team will lose a site many of them chose for its size and pace, a direct relationship with regular patients and a schedule they shaped themselves. Some will face a longer commute, and parking at the hospital is harder. These losses are real, and later installments of this plan will address them directly. Bridges and Bridges argue that people need to let go of what they are losing before they can accept what is new (Bridges & Bridges, 2016), and a case for change that ignores the losses will not be believed.

What the Combined Department Gains

The case is not only about ending duplication; it is also about what the combined department makes possible. With Westside's MRI scanner moved into the hospital department, outpatient MRI capacity roughly doubles, which should bring the wait for an outpatient MRI well below its current twelve business days. A single scheduling team means a referring office makes one call. A single on-call rotation means technologists share coverage across a larger team, so a sick call no longer closes a modality for the day. Westside technologists will gain access to the hospital department's education programs and to modalities they have not worked with, such as interventional imaging, if they want them. These gains should be stated as concretely as the problems, because a case that describes only what is wrong gives people nothing to move toward.

How the Case Will Be Shared

The case will be shared first with the lead technologists at both sites, who will be asked to check Table 1 against their own experience and correct anything that is wrong, before it is presented to all staff. That step does two things: it makes the problem statement more accurate, and it begins forming the guiding coalition that Kotter's second step requires (Kotter, 2012). The all-staff presentation will follow, with the lease date, the decision deadline and the commitments in the section above stated in the first five minutes, and with time for questions. The manager will not claim the case is settled until staff have had a chance to test it.

References

Bridges, W., & Bridges, S. (2016). Managing transitions: Making the most of change (4th ed.). Da Capo Lifelong Books.

Kotter, J. P. (2012). Leading change. Harvard Business Review Press.

Oreg, S., Vakola, M., & Armenakis, A. (2011). Change recipients' reactions to organizational change: A 60-year review of quantitative studies. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 47(4), 461-524. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021886310396550