Transitional care is a moderate-to long-term facility that focuses on therapy, wound care, and medical management of chronic diseases. Individuals within transitional care can range from low need or minimal care to individuals who are total care patients needing 24hr nursing assistance. These facilities are often known as Long-Term care, skilled nursing, or subacute rehab facilities.
Kalia recently accepted the chief executive officer (CEO) position at a steadily declining transitional care organization. After meeting with the board of trustees, she was eager to demonstrate how her vision would change the direction of the failing company. Her hope was to discover allies within the company that could help make it easier to put her plan for the company into action. However, she soon found that her formal authority as CEO had been severely undermined by the pervious CEO, whose practice had been to distribute power within the organization, but had poorly managed those to whom he gave pow- er.
During Kalia’s first week, she arranged her schedule so that she could meet with administrative staff as soon as possible. During the meeting, Kalia requested budget information for each manager. None of the administrative staff were able to obtain the information for Kalia. They told her that company financial information was considered classified and could only be accessed through Manny, the chief financial officer (CFO) – the managers were not able to monitor their own budgets. One individual volunteered that sometimes the CFO’s administrative assistant would allow people to review reports, if the CFO was out and “she liked you.”
After the meeting, Kalia went to Dominic, the chief information officer (CIO), to see if a centralized shared network could be created so employees could access important and sensitive data necessary for staff to make business decisions. Dominic informed her that the system was complicated, and that he was the only one familiar with how it was set up. He also told her that he would be going on paternity leave, and no one else could be trusted with the system. Therefore, a project like that could not begin until he returned. Dominic suggested that, in the meantime, Kalia begin the request with Manny, the CFO, as he would need to approve the budget for the project because it would be costly.
Kalia walked to Manny’s office. As soon as she walked in, Manny said, “I heard you don’t think that the way I handle finances is acceptable. I have 26 years of experience, plus dual master’s degrees in ac- counting and finance. I am surprised that a young woman starting out would consider herself an expert. Kalia was surprised by Manny’s comments, and she was equally surprised to turn and see two of her administrative staff sitting on the couch in Manny’s office. Uncertain of how to respond, Kalia turned and walked back to her office. In her office, Kalia sat down at her desk and put her face in her hands. She was now questioning everything she thought she knew about the company, being the CEO, and why she was hired.