The hospital has the benefit of having a central location within the city and being easily accessed from all areas within the city limits. In addition, urgent care centers are located throughout the county making the hospital system accessible for those with emergent needs outside of the city limits. The hospital system has the benefit of having the greatest number of remote urgent care locations of the three hospital systems that are present in the area.

The comprehensive services offered have grown in scope over the past 3 years. The hospital system now has many specialty offices with a focus on cardiac, pulmonary, and oncology. There are also medical groups and diagnostic centers that operate under the hospital system umbrella located throughout the county in addition to the many urgent care centers.

B2: Weaknesses

The hospital has a persistently high turnover rate for clinical staff. The hospital has become increasingly reliant on the use of agencies to staff the clinical team and the hiring of newly graduated nurses. This creates strain on the longer-term staff that are then required to train new employees frequently and care for higher patient loads during periods of low staffing.

There is also a high nurse to patient ratio in critical care areas. Due to high staff turnover, and a shortage of nurses that are available for hire, the critical care units have nurse to patient ratios that are often higher then one to three, creating an unsafe work environment. This has created poor word of mouth marketing both internally and externally in addition to decreased patient satisfaction scores. Lack of action on the part of the upper leadership team to focus on retention of current, experienced clinical staff has created crisis-staffing levels. The leadership of this organization needs to act urgently to increase staff retention and decrease turnover as the nursing shortage is expected to continue and worsen for some time. Marketline projects that by the year 2020 there will be 400,000 fewer nurses available across the U.S. (p.8)

B3: Opportunities