By Hazem Elshenawy
The problem that Foley is facing is that she thinks that the financial data of the hospital aren’t meticulous enough and may even had been manipulated to give a bleak picture of the hospital, and the second problem is losing the hospital by selling or at least one or more of its services, which is socially not accepted for Foley because she knows about healthcare system in the area since she has a nursing background, so Foley is in a real ethical and financial stressful situation in which all the stakeholders have concerns about the financial state of the hospital, but she has to take an action so that she can live peacefully and continue to take satisfaction in her new career as COO.
There are many people at the stake here, the CEO is at the stake of losing his job if he didn't find a solution to the supposed difficult financial situation of the hospital, or at least he wouldn't have the flexibility needed to run the hospital in terms of adding new services and keeping the nonprofit services untouched, and also the stakes are high for the consultant who should prove his point of view regarding the bleak picture of the financial status of the hospital otherwise he would appear as the one who don’t deserve that big fees, and also might lose his reputation as a financial consultant especially when the CEO didn't ask the CFO about any data, so the consultant should prove that he deserves the trust and every penny of his fees.
for Foley the stakes are different because she had a more social issue with the idea of selling and consequently closing the hospital by the parent, so that there will be only one local health provider and the logical consequences here is to loose competition and hence the healthcare prices will rise sharply, which puts the local community at risk of not having the reasonable healthcare they used to have.
There is another concern for Foley which is the idea that at least the new parent of the hospital might close the nonprofit departments of the hospital such as the mental health service, which will also increase the sufferings of the local people since this department is the only one in the area. and it appears after all, that Foley wants to really prove herself as a new COO with full responsibility but she is also afraid of losing the trust of her CEO if he didn't value her way of speaking up her thoughts and concerns, there is also an important stakeholder which is the people who are affected by this decision either the workers, nurses and doctors who all might lose their jobs or the patients who depend on that hospital for their healthcare services.
Foley has many things to do to influence her CEO, but before she can use them she has to check her information about the real financial situation of the hospital, because she built her fears on only assumptions and didn’t study the numbers so well, this might put all her arguments into risk of being flawed, so I think she has to speak with someone she trusts, may be executives that she knows and trusts well or a financial officer who is a friend of her and can help her understand the numbers well, she might also get another different perspective from a friend outside of the