Accountable Care Organizations Essays (Examples)

By not taking advantage of these kinds of organizations, doctors and hospitals that do not wish to participate are missing out on cost savings, ease of patient treatment, efficiency, and much more. For patients, looking for doctors and hospitals that participate in accountable care organizations can be a good move, both financially and for ease of treatment. When records are shared and hospitals and doctors agree to be accountable to one another, there is less margin for error. That does not mean that problems cannot develop, but they are much less likely to happen and they will be smaller problems when they occur, overall. Health care workers should be accountable to patients and to other health care workers.

The team effort that was used to collect and provide this information is very important, because it is similar to the team effort that is used in accountable care organizations. In other…

Even worse, because the negotiated rates for services is so much lower than the non-insured rates for those services, many providers may actually provide services more liberally than necessary to make up for the lower revenue of each service rendered.

Eventually, I believe the only way to really address the problem of healthcare costs is to adopt the results-based compensation structure already successfully in use in Britain. Unfortunately, such profound systemic changes will be tremendously difficult to implement in the U.S. In the meantime, therefore, the ACO concept may be the most viable means of incentivizing healthcare cost reduction on the part of providers as well as patients.

Relevance to Risk Management Concepts

Another aspect of increased flexibility associated with ACOs in comparison to HMOs is that ACOs encourage patients to utilize network providers but also permit them to exercise the autonomy to seek treatment from other providers. This, however,…

Medicaid and the ACA

Discuss the issues central to the expansion of Medicaid created by the Affordable Care Act. From state policy perspective is this a good way to increase access to healthcare at a reasonable cost? Be sure to discuss the success stories you uncover as you complete your research for this question. eview the following and consider the questions below as part of your initial post.

From the State's perspective, expanding Medicaid under the ACA is a sound financial investment. However, the Supreme Court ruled that each state could decide to enter the program individually and as a consequence many states have not. These states claim that they cannot afford the program. However, a report by the Congressional Budget Office clearly shows that the Federal Government will actually be responsible for the bulk of the costs in the first decade of the program -- about 93% of the…

Unintended Consequences of Health Care Reform

Consequences of Health Care Reform

My discussion is related to the individual mandate of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) of 2010.

The policy problems addressed by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) of 2010 are the high cost of health insurance that is untenable for low and middle income earners and the discretionary criteria for enrollment and coverage exercised by medical and health insurance carriers. The PPACA is an excellent policy solution to these issues in the United States and, absent socialized medicine, is a robust response to what has been an intractable and escalating problem in the U.S. Many people who have unable to obtain medical insurance are now able to do so.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was designed to significantly reduce the number of people who are uninsured through the provision of a continuum…

Accountability and the Healthcare Industry

Accountability is absolutely crucial when it comes to the health care industry. The professional health care industry has an obligation to create an atmosphere of responsibility and obligation with strong ethical values and where these values are clearly enforced. One of the reasons why this is so absolutely crucial is because the stakes are so high in health care: clinicians deal with the high stakes of life and death each day. "Accountability encompasses the procedures and processes by which one party justifies and takes responsibility for its activities such as for achieving various organizational goals" (O'Hagan, 2009). Accountability creates a culture which can thus be focused on things like evidence-based practice and on a steady improvement of health and quality services because the atmosphere values and rewards things like these and is structured in such a way that it is demanded by the collective and…

com). A certain amount of errors is to be expected, but there should not be so many that it demonstrates a certain level of skewedness about the model in its entirety. Thus, if the NHI model is the one which is selected, then it needs to be tested against a range of different scenarios. The following demonstrate some truly relevant what-ifs: what if the doctors only move half the projected volume; what if medicare slashes rates; what if competitors open a comparable program (dgapartners.com).

There are a range of factors which can change or adjust once a healthcare facility opens their doors for business. And as much as this facility is attempting to engage in a solid humanitarian effort, at the end of the day, it's still a business and people need to get paid. Thus, before engaging in further developmental activities, one needs to determine in what ways the…

Health Care: The Next Twelve Months

Over the next twelve months, there will be many changes to health care in the United States. The largest and most ambitious goal is to provide the majority of Americans with health insurance (Blendon & Benson, 2010). However, there will be a presidential election and a Supreme Court ruling, which means that 2012 could be the year that determines whether the health care law moves forward or whether it is shut down. It could also go forward in part, after having large pieces of it removed, and it could go forward with some fundamental changes. How the elections go will greatly affect the law - unless, of course, the Supreme Court strikes the law down before the elections arrive. It seems like that the Supreme Court will rule on the individual mandate from a constitutional standpoint, and that could lead to some of the…

Employer Healthcare Benefit Plans

More than half of the American population is covered by a comprehensive health plan of one type or another. That's approximately 160 million people. The programs that come under the above mentioned coverage include the likes of employer sponsored plans and other government initiatives for instance Medicaid and Medicare, a small proportion of health insurance which is purchased on individual basis may also be included in this. If we proceed to explain employer sponsored health programs, government initiatives and individual healthcare benefits individually, then briefly we can say that the employer benefit plans mostly comprise of group plans and are called "the employee welfare benefit plans"

Table of Contents

Introduction

Literature eview

Discussion

The Estimated Effects of PPACA on Coverage

The Number of Uninsured Decreases by 53%

Four Million Children Will Gain Coverage

The Individual Mandate Contributes Most to educing the Number of Uninsured

Premiums in…

Coffee egional Medical Center, Inc. CMC") is a non-profit, 88-bed hospital located in Douglas, Georgia. Since 1953, CMC has served the healthcare needs of the community as the sole hospital-provider in Douglas, Georgia and surrounding Coffee County. CMC's mission is to provide the highest-quality healthcare, in a safe and caring environment, for both patients and families (Coffee egional Medical Center, N.d.).

CMC is an acute care hospital for adults and children in southern Georgia whose primary and secondary markets extend from Coffee to Jeff Davis and Bacon counties to Ben Hill and Atkinson counties.

Technological

Healthcare is miles behind the curve when it comes to technological innovation, an industry that historically has not been easy to innovate for. There are two key trends that have changed the game just in the last few months, explains Zoe Barry, CEO and Founder of Zappx, "opening up what could be a landgrab for…

Healthcare Organizational Readiness & Strategy

Healthcare Organization Network

Company Profile

Vanguard operates 25 acute care and three specialty hospitals in urban and suburban areas of Arizona, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, and exas. Across the Vanguard hospital system, there are roughly 7,100 licensed beds ("Hoover," 2014). he Vanguard regional health care system provides a continuum of care that spans outpatient centers, medical office buildings, clinics, and hospitals ("Hoover," 2014). Vanguard operates four managed health care plans serving members in Arizona, Illinois, Michigan, and exas ("Hoover," 2014).

Although Vanguard Health Systems declared it "wants to lead the way to better health care," in 2013, Vanguard was acquired by enet Healthcare ("Hoover," 2014). he enet Healthcare system extended the range of services to 80 hospitals, more than 190 outpatient centers, 36,000 affiliated physicians, more than 105,000 employee, and six health care plans ("Hoover," 2014). enet is a for-profit organization operating in 14 states in…

Evolution of Nursing oles in an Enlarged National Health Care System

The Affordable Care Act enables the provision of health insurance to 30 million people above the coverage figures prior to the enactment of the law. Because of this precipitous rise in the number of health insurance members, access to care as a function of the availability of primary care providers has been a leading issue in the transition to the nation-wide system of health care insurance. Public health models and nursing practice arrangements are changing in order to meet the immediate and anticipated care needs that have been brought to bear on the health care systems.

Public Health and Nurse Managed Health Centers (NMHCs)

From the earliest days of public health, the roles of nurses have been embedded in the social, educational, and political needs of communities. Health education has functioned as a springboard to community organizing, patient advocacy,…

Healthcare Reform Models

Health Care Reform Models

Preventive Psychiatry

Shim and colleagues (2012) argue for taking advantage of provisions within the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010 that emphasizes preventive and integrated care. They propose that the primary care setting is ideal for screening patients for signs of mental illness and associated risk factors. A mental health wellness program could also include coaches and other experts that interface with patients on an individual basis, including at the patient's home.

Long-Term Behavioral Health Care

Bao and colleagues (2012) examined four patient populations defined by disease severity and ability to pay, and then assessed how these four groups will fare under the behavioral health provisions in the ACA. Patients with private insurance and suffering from mild to moderate mental illness will probably receive the best care at a Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH). The authors suggest that the presence of…

Health Information System

Promoting Action Design esearch to create value in healthcare through IT

ecently there has been varying proof showing that health IT reduces costs while improving the standard of care offered. The same factors that had caused delays in reaping benefits from IT investment made in other sectors (i.e. time consuming procedural change) are also very common within the healthcare sector. Due to the current transitive nature of the Healthcare sector, new IT investment is likely not going to provide maximum value unless this new investment is backed up with a total reform of healthcare delivery. The overall ability of healthcare IT value researchers to add value to practice will be severely limited as a result of the traditional ex-post approach to measuring IT and the fact that government spurs significant investment. It may be risky to generalize or compare results from traditional IT value research with those…

HEALTHCAE & INFOMATION TECHNOLOGY

The state of healthcare in the United States is very much influenced and improved through the increased use of technology solutions. Whether it be the use of tablets, laptops, electronic healthcare records and some others, the use of technology has become more and more pervasive as the years and decades roll on. However, not everyone is sold on technology being a saving grace and those same people often think that technology solutions being added to healthcare actually do not help or that they make things worse rather than make them better. However, there is a cacophony of evidence that suggests and proves that electronic healthcare records, electronic administration and the use of information technology in a strategic and adept fashion actually makes things better over the long haul. This is true for patients, administrators, healthcare professionals and the wider network of providers that are typically also…

Globalization is a process that is mostly invisible but materializes itself in newly formed behaviors and trends that represent cultures from around the globe. In other words, it is the planet learning about itself in many new ways. Technology and rapid transportation has changed the dynamic of the globe in such a way that that globe eventually becomes itself by getting to know and understand itself.

Globalization is neither good nor bad or perhaps both depending on your perspective. Globalization has not reached full potential yet and there are many who will remain locked in their own culture for better or for worse. The problems occur when one cannot recognize what is happening and feels helpless to address the impact of these new behaviors, morals and trends.

For me, I don't really care, because I don't pretend to know the answer of such a big question as to whether the…

Value-based reimbursement models are becoming more common in healthcare. Value-based models structure reimbursements according to metrics like efficiency, cost, quality, and patient feedback (Pennic, 2014). Some of the most commonly used value-based reimbursement and payment models include Medicare Quality Incentive Programs, Pay for Performance, Accountable Care Organizations, Bundled Payments, Patient-Centered Medical Home, and Payment for Coordination (Pennic, 2014). More traditional reimbursement models include standard fee-for-service systems, which are woefully inefficient for patients with chronic conditions due to the large number and type of treatments needed (Sanghavi, George, Samuels, et al, 2014). While there is no one preferred approach to reimbursements, value-based models are clearly superior to fee-for-service models.

One of the most promising value-based reimbursement models is the Patient-Centered Medical Home model. This model tends to be more culturally-appropriate than others, taking into account individual and family needs, community diversity, and other contextual variables that might impact patient health outcomes…

Health Share of Oregon

A Community Oriented Approach to Accountable Care for Medicaid Beneficiaries

What is an accountable care organization (ACOs)?

The accountable care organizational model resulted in an effort that tried to focus on improving the quality of care available to patients while also focusing on cost restraints in the Medicaid system. An ACO is an organization that is accountable to Medicaid and the guidelines they have set which are relatively strict.

What makes Oregon unique in its approach to Coordinated Care Organization?

The policy makers in Oregon based the design of this program on the idea that consumers can play a critical role in improving their own health outcomes. The Oregon approach places consumers directly in an advisory role position with consumers serving as member of a community advisory council. This integrative perspective on healthcare design and community assessment has shown promise.

Why are states experimenting with different…

CEO

Identification of innovative approaches to improving health system quality, controlling costs and maximizing access to care

Pursuant to your request, this memorandum describes a series of innovative ideas that can be used to meet improvement goals concerning cost, quality and access. A discussion concerning which innovation is the most critical to ensure the health system achieves its goals is followed by an analysis concerning which innovation will be the most difficult to achieve and why. Finally, a description concerning why the implementation of these innovative ideas will improve health system performance is followed by a summary of the research and important findings in the memorandum's conclusion.

Five innovative ideas that the health system could implement to meet improvement goals around cost, quality, and access

Five innovative ideas that our organization can use for these purposes are as follow:

A. Hospital Value-Based Purchasing (VBP) Program.

B. The Pioneer Accountable Care…

Affordable Care Act

Since its enactment in 2010, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has transformed the way in which healthcare is provided in America. With its primary aim being to address "long-standing challenges facing the U.S. healthcare system related to access, affordability, and quality of care," the ACA has increased healthcare coverage for more Americans by mandating that health insurance be purchased and that insurance providers not discriminate against applicants (Obama, 2016). When considering the ACA, however, it is important to realize that this piece of healthcare legislation is far more impactful on the lives of Americans than simply in a healthcare context: in fact, the ACA affects lawmakers at both state and federal levels, workers, politicians and voters tasked with electing officials who will either pledge to carry the mantle of the ACA -- or repeal and replace it, as President-Elect Donald Trump has pledged to do. This paper…

Healthcare

Trends in regulation of Healthcare reform with the potential for the most positive effect on care quality, sustainability of organizations and why they are so important

Reforms in payments, anchored on recent patterns in the private and public sectors are needed to support high quality interventions that matter to patients. Medicare has moved towards payments that are aimed at person-level healthcare. Such measures include DRG payments and penalties that have been recently applied for readmissions, person-level payment remissions in the Accountable Care Organization, Person level payment remissions in the Medicare Advantage program, reforms such as the Medicare Shared Savings Program, present and past pilot episode payments and the Pioneer pilot plan. However, Medicare payments are largely based on fees for service. Although the quality interventions at person level sought currently are not ideal, patients and providers can still gain from the change of their payments drawn from fee-for service.…

Planned change in the eldercare advocacy organization

In the coming years, many countries will experience a dramatic shift in healthcare infrastructure due to an expanding elderly population size. However, the changes may vary across countries depending on many factors such as the kind of social welfare available in each country, the political environment which determine policies, the level of healthcare available and individual expectations in each country. Due to this wide variance, the innovations within this space will also vary greatly. What this means to the healthcare manager is that managing innovations becomes very hard (Shlutz, Andre & Sjovold, 2015 p 42). This also impacts on performance management which is fast gaining popularity in the public sector as a means to improve on accountability. Unfortunately, it has been cumbered by a series of challenges in its implementation; this is in spite of the frameworks developed over the last couple of…

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was passed into law under the Obama Administration and was responsible for reshaping the health care system in many different ways. From overhauling procedures regarding how health care providers deal with patients and practice quality care to providing more people with coverage, the ACA was meant to make fix many of the problems that Americans had with health care. While some have found the ACA to be highly positive, others have found it to be a complete disaster.

Obama noted that the aim of the ACA was to address “long-standing challenges facing the US healthcare system related to access, affordability, and quality of care” (525). Those three points—access, affordability and quality—were the main selling points of the ACA. The legislation was supposed to provide more access to care for people. It was supposed to make care more affordable, and it was supposed to increase the…

Evolving Practice of Nursing and Patient Care Delivery Models

How the Practice of Nursing is Expected to Grow and Change: The Future of Nursing has a few healthcare delivery challenges unique to it, but there are several such issues that commonly occur in other nations, as well. Population aging is one issue that generates demand for increased healthcare services. A growing number of individuals, from all age groups, suffer from chronic illnesses; about 50% of U.S. citizens have been diagnosed with arthritis, diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, mental disorders, and hypertension (Reinhard & Hassmiller, n.d.).

A 2009 report by the AARP (American Association of Retired Persons) pertaining to chronic problems notes that patients and caregivers have firsthand experience of the absence of patient care-related coordination amongst healthcare workers, typically leading to needless repeat hospitalizations, repeat procedures and examinations, and arduous hospital-to-home moves. An acute dearth of professionals (such as nurses) is being…

Evolving Practice of Nurses

Dear Fellow Nurses,

The nursing profession is currently experiencing revolutionary changes that are expected to transform nursing practice today and in the future. These revolutionary changes in nursing profession and practice are largely influenced by the fact the changing role of nurses in the modern healthcare environment. The nursing role in the modern health care sector is changing because patient care delivery or caring for the sick is becoming more complicated, which force nurses to assume a wider range of health care responsibilities (Tiffin, 2012). Moreover, nursing profession and nursing practice is experiencing significant changes because of the ongoing restructuring of the United States health care delivery system. Actually, as the country continues to transform is health care delivery system, the nursing profession is expected to continue playing an important role in this process. The growth and change in nursing practice will generate new models of…

Care Coverage and Inequalities in the Education System

Traditional Care Coverage vs. Managed Care Coverage

Traditional care coverage is also known as Fee-for-service (FFS). Under this model, the patient pays for services that are itemized in the Invoice. The physicians gain an incentive to offer more treatments as payment depends on the quantity of care and not the quality of care. In the health insurance and healthcare sectors, traditional care coverage happens when physicians and other caregivers get a fee for each service like laboratory tests, office visit, procedure and other healthcare services. After providing services, the patient makes payments retrospectively. Traditional health coverage enables the patients to choose a healthcare provider, including a favorite hospital or doctor. The services rendered are paid for by the patient and then submits the bill to the insurance firm for reimbursement of the percentage it agreed to the insurer for the patient (Kongstvedt,…

Organizational Structure

The healthcare organization that this paper will focus on is Carolinas Healthcare System. In particular, this is one of the top healthcare organizations in the Southeast region and one of the most wide-ranging, non-profit healthcare organizations in the United States.

Governing Structure

The governing structure of Carolinas Healthcare System is led by the Board of Commissioners. These people are a set of individuals who have shown awareness and interest in the health and well-being of the public. In addition, the organization has a Board of Advisors, whose members are selected by the Chairman of the Board (Carolinas Healthcare System, 2016).

Mission, Vision, and Key Values

Carolinas Healthcare System's mission is the formation of an all-encompassing system to provide comprehensive healthcare associated services, in addition to educational and research prospects, for the benefit of the consumers. Secondly, the vision of the organization is to be nationally acknowledged as a…

Organizational esponsibility and Current Health Care Issues

Ethics is the assessment and research of the human habits in regard to moral concepts, particularly those in a certain team, occupation, or specific organization (The Free Dictionary, 2012). People deal with lots of ethical/moral problems everyday and how they react might result in significant and legal ethical/moral ramifications. In the healthcare market, having approaches for making ethical/moral choices is a necessary part of the task. This paper will provide a circumstance that happens in a medical workplace and if the choice of the medical assistant will have an effect on the decision-making procedure, which can bring about legal and honest complexities.

Circumstance

The situation provides a skillfully experienced medical assistant and Licensed Practical Nurse (LPN) working in a clinic or medical workplace as a workplace assistant. Alone in the workplace and in charge of the phone calls throughout lunch, the assistant gets…

OGANIZATIONAL PHILOSOPHY AT WOK: TECHNOLOGY & ETHICS

Organizational Behavior

Digital and information technology allows for new opportunities for education, including at the professional level. More and more, human resources use technology to assist in the modification and development of company culture. 21st century organizational leadership can be characterized by the realization that a clearly defined and strongly present organizational culture is key to success. Some of the most successful organizations are ones wherein their culture is adaptable and flexible. These same companies understand the importance and value of smooth transition and effective implementation of organizational change as well as promotion of organizational culture. Human esources is a department that is integral in the development and sustainment of the organizational culture. Human esources is additionally a depart that can facilitate organizational change(s). Human esources professionals should take the time to educate themselves and learn the ways in which technology can supplement…

In this regard, it is vitally important that leadership communicate effectively with staff, with particular focus on the fact that quality improvement in patient databases means improved quality in health care. This is good not only for patients, but also for the reputation of the Center, and by association for the staff working with patients as well.

In order to further increase the effectiveness of the PDCA model, the Hospital Corporation of America (ansom et al., 2008, p. 69) went a step further in creating the FOCUS PDCA Model. This model involves the addition of five steps, as indicated by the FOCUS acronym: Find a process to improve; Organize a team that knows the process; Clarify current knowledge of the existing or redesigned process; Understand the variables and causes of process variation within the chosen process; and Select the process improvement and identify the potential action for improvement.

Because of…

Organization Models

Within the correctional system there are three different organization models which apply and are used in administrative and management purposes. These models include the authoritarian model, bureaucratic model and participative model. The paper will give a description of each of these three models as they apply to the correctional environments. It will also discuss the intended goals of the correctional administrations that utilize these models and the specific time period the models were developed as well as finding out if these models were effective during the period which they were developed. The information the paper will give the foundation of the correctional systems as well as the models that are found within in and if these models are still in effect now. The operations of a correctional facility are under these models in order to provide the in mates with a particular type of security and care. With…

It provides health-related advice on its website that all readers can benefit from, not simply those who use its services. As well as reaching out to the wider population of patients, it honors those within its fold who serve the organization with nights such as its "Celebrating Our Talent" ceremony designed to honor organizational members who have shown excellence in their duties (Boyd 2012).

The climate at the organization stresses valuing employees as well as clients, and serving the needs of its employees is included in the organization's statements of its critical functions. This acknowledges the need for caregivers to be cared for as well as patients. There is also a commitment to technological change to facilitate care: the organization was praised in 2003 for completely reconfiguring the way in which it kept track of patient data, switching to an entirely online system, to comply with changes in regulation and…

Smith provided the appropriate managerial direction which struck the right balance between creativity, performance and productivity. His farsightedness which encompassed a wide vision was long-term, ambitious and the same time entirely practical and feasible. (Section 7: Leadership and Management, p. 243)

Having earlier steered a floundering company towards a successful path, Smith's work was uphill. He had to drastically change the organizational culture and structure while reducing conflict within the very talented set of employees and provide them with a collective direction. He was also expected to reduce the atmosphere of uncertainty prevailing in the organization and use the "countercultures" of the earlier two companies to foster innovation and creativity and thus get a competitive advantage for the new organization. (Section 2: Organizations & Culture, p. 64)

d. Organizational goals, vision, mission, objectives and values

Organizational mission defines the very reason for its existence. It basically refers to a general…

Organizational behaviorists are seeking ways to reduce overall workplace stress and ways to harness the potential for technology to reduce instead of cause stress.

Technology can be harnessed to reduce the stress that it causes. For example, time saved on one project should be used to encourage down time, exercise, or other stress-reducing activities. Employees can be encouraged to play games, listen to music, or email friends during structured breaks. Instead of prohibiting employees from communicating with friends and families, supervisors can encourage such communications so long as employee productivity is not compromised. Workplaces rich in technological tools and with robust it departments should also ensure ergonomic work stations and related devices. Technology allows workers to telecommute and therefore spend more time with their families, and technology makes business communications far less stressful for socially anxious or shy workers.

At the same time, technology allows for a constant barrage of…

Another internal factor that affects the O'Connell High School are the customer demands, in which in the school's case, the customers are the students. O'Connell High School satisfies everything that students and their parents would want in an education. Aside from the low tuition fee and quality education that the school offers, it also reinforces learning to students and to anyone who wishes to gain more knowledge through community education. This is done through evening and weekend classes and a variety of non-credit courses. Thus, these positive internal factors of good opportunities given to students, O'Connell High Schools organization behavior is influenced.

estructuring is another internal factor that positively impacts the organizational behavior of the school. Despite of the closing of the school in school year 2003-2004, the school is now back in pursuing its missions and objectives. It has restructured its curriculum, expanding through more educational degrees that are…

Organization Behavior

Strategic Management of Human esources

This paper acquaints the reader with the Human esource Management at the largest fast food brand in the World -- McDonald's. It describes the core HM practices which are currently in use at the company and discusses them in the light of modern International H Management practices. The paper also contains recommendations on how McDonald's can improve its H practices.

MCDONALDS: INTODUCTION

McDonald's is the World's largest fast food service retailer. Head quartered in Oak Brook, United States; it operates with almost 33,000 fully functioning fast food outlets in 119 countries. It was incorporated as a barbecue restaurant by ichard and Maurice McDonald in 1940. Initially, McDonald's was just offering beef burgers, drinks, and fries. In 1955, McDonald brothers sold it to aymond Albert Kroc who was a franchising agent at that time. ay Kroc took this business to the heights of success…

Each employee is given the resources needed to achieve their goals.

ithin the unit, performance expectations are identified and measured. Productivity goals are laid out, and evaluated. These results are considered by department managers as a key measure of productivity. ithin the marketing department, for example, sales figures (performance) are the key measure, and are weighed against the time and money spent to acquire them. e found this approach to be typical of each department.

So, in looking at how the company views performance and how it links performance to productivity, is that they do this well at the department level.

Technology

InforMed scores moderately well on the use of technology to enhance productivity. The basic requirements are in place, but they are not necessarily used to their best. Each department, as we have found, is responsible for their own budget and that includes the technology budget. At the department…

Healthcare: Clinical Integration

Item Page

What is clinical integration

History of clinical integration

Goals of clinical integration

Importance of clinical integration

Health reform

New payment models

IT advancement

Barriers to clinical integration

Legal barriers

Lack of practitioner alignment

Lack of interoperability

How to achieve success in clinical integration

Incentive alignment

Knowledge alignment

Behavioral alignment

The future of health care systems

Physician acquisitions vs. clinical integration

HIEs -- solution to clinical integration?

Policy makers are beginning to appreciate the fact that only systemic change can effectively change, for the better, the manner of health care delivery in the U.S.; and that anything less would only alter the system's edges - with little or no substantial effect on cost-control, innovation-promotion, effectiveness of reward incentive schemes, coordination and coverage (AHA, 2010). Clinical integration has been found to be crucial to the change needed for the achievement of the aforementioned goals (AHA, 2010). Despite…

Training

Scope of Training

Large health care organizations will undoubtedly have a large scope of training. The investments and systems approach is beneficial for companies who can realize economies of scale. Through economies of scale the unit cost for each selective individual trained decreases. This ultimately allows the cost of investments and systems to be spread throughout the entire organization. The systems approach is particularly beneficial as it creates and distills consistent behavior throughout the entire organization. Each individual that is trained is usually receiving and absorbing the same information as their peers. This insures the continuity of the business and its underlying operations. The scope will depend primarily on the needs of the business. In some instances, training may involve the entire health care organization while in other instances; it may only require a select department. In either case, investments in systems allows for the most efficient use of…

Stated to be barriers in the current environment and responsible for the reporting that is inadequate in relation to medical errors are:

Lack of a common understanding about errors among health care professionals

Physicians generally think of errors as individual that resulted from patient morbidity or mortality.

Physicians report errors in medical records that have in turn been ignored by researchers.

Interestingly errors in medication occur in almost 1 of every 5 doses provided to patients in hospitals. It was stated by Kaushal, et al., (2001) that "the rate of medication errors per 100 admission was 55 in pediatric inpatients. Using their figure, we estimated that the sensitivity of using a keyword search on explicit error reports to detect medication errors in inpatients is about 0.7%. They also reported the 37.4% of medication errors were caused by wrong dose or frequency, which is not far away from our result of…

Healthcare Crisis

Health insurance has gone up over the past two years as a result of a nationwide increase .insurance companies have the tendency of settling only a percentage of a patient's bill. The truth of the matter is patients are not the only people who suffer due to this crisis the doctors too fall victims as mots of them opt to close down since they are underpaid by the insurance companies as well as being forced to pay the yearly premiums for malpractice .physicians are taken as the ones who are at fault for the ongoing healthcare crisis. This is true to some extent but they are not the bones to blame entirely as there are many parties involved in this issue. First of all when we look at the money involved we can say that this crisis is the fault of insurance companies since they are out there…

Healthcare

The term health care refers to the inter-related system of care provided to persons during illness. In most of the cases, healthcare begins with the family doctor who refers patient to specialists if needed or directly order further diagnostic testing. Community health clinics perform the same procedure as a family doctor, but alongside with that, clinics also provide insight into patterns of health or illness seen within the community. Hospital just form one part of the healthcare community, as are mostly visited when a patient's condition is more acute and requires intervention by the hospitals high-end staff, since more can be done for him in a hospital rather than in a clinic where he is just an out-patient.

Clinics of various types provide very specific services, such as "pain management clinics" these clinics are targeted for towards people suffering from pain conditions. ehabilitation services also form a needed part…

Leadership on Organization Effectiveness

MedShare is an organization engaged in the provision of health care services. ecently, the company gave me an appointment as the Chief Financial Officer to manage the organization's financial operations and lead it to a successful path. MedShare is the parent company of the subsidiary On-site Healthcare Facility that also owns www.onsite.com Domain. It is a global corporation with strong representation in leading markets throughout the United States. This is a Texas corporation with international headquarters in Texas. The business was organized in 2008. It has demonstrated itself as a top competitor in the healthcare industry since its inception. It made an initial public offering in 2009 and has proven to be a profitable business venture (Bass & Avolio, 2010). For this reason, investors were fast at purchasing stock and trusted the organization with their investments. MedShare services portfolio includes:

Cancer Services

II. Cardiothoracic Services

III.…

Barak concludes by suggesting that the issue and concept of diversity take on a "special urgency" in human service healthcare organizations among the organization as a whole and staff, and that the organization review its quality of service and commitment to the community in order to truly impact the lives of diverse populations.

Managing Diversity: Best Practices

H Management often works off of the ideals of 'best practices.' This concept is discussed in the next article, "Managing the Diversity evolution: Best Practices for the 21st Century Business." Aronson takes a more general approach to diversity but one that can be applied directly to the healthcare industry nonetheless. Aronson points out many of the trends previously identified with regard to diversity problems in the nation's business climate as a whole. In particular the author points out that diversity issues may stem from a number of causes including cultural differences and systematic…

Others include delays in data accessibility, albeit shorter delays and the continued need for source data verification (Donovan, 2007).

Other obstacles have occurred in the developing of mobile healthcare applications. These have included mobile device limitations, wireless networking problems, infrastructure constraints, security concerns, and user distrust (Keng and Shen, 2006).

A third problem that has been encountered is that of a lack of education on not only the importance of the information technology but also training on how to use the specific pieces of equipment. The tools that are provided to people are only as good as the training that is provided on how to use them. The tools may be able to do wonderful things, but if those that are using them do not know how to get the best use out of them they will in the end be less efficient.

Medical Errors

According to an Institute of…

Healthcare Industry Accountability

Beckham Company

After having read your article entitled the accountability crisis in healthcare, one may have several observations and suggestions concerning both the content and conclusions contained within. First are the generalizations indicting the healthcare industry, (particularly the not-for-profits), in terms of the alleged fragmentation between the parts that make up the whole; namely, according to your text, physicians, hospitals and insurers. One may also take umbrage at examples you employ to ensure accountability. While they appear on the surface to be worthy of merit, closer examinations reveal weaknesses in areas that may not be evident at first consideration. Finally, it appears that many of the examples cited as support for one point-of-view may support the opposing point-of-view equally as well. Let us examine the text more closely based on these issues.

The major generalizations made in the text are as follows:

Nobody is in control because…

Mergers

You a middle manager a healthcare organization merged a previous competitor. Up, employee's competition enemy provided a poor quality care. The corporation, place inpatient outpatient services organization.

Surviving a merger at a large healthcare entity: Managerial concerns

Surviving a merger at a large healthcare entity: Managerial concerns

Mergers are extremely difficult and delicate periods within any organization's history. More mergers fail than succeed. Uniting an organization with two very disparate cultures makes the endeavor even more challenging, and much is at stake, given that a failure of a healthcare merger can result in serious harm to patients as well as to both organizations' reputations. "Merger failures usually revolve around people issues -- loss of key staff, culture clash, FUD: fear-uncertainty-doubt, and last but not least, poor communication and interaction between employees of the merging organizations. Many of these issues are also faced by companies participating in joint ventures and…

United Healthcare Case Study

United Healthcare Medical Insurance was formed to insure the American citizens against medical expenses. It has the mandate to conduct and offer insurances services to the public within the American nation. This is important in ensuring that the people with both high and low incomes can manage to cater for their medical expenses (Shaw, 2010). This has been seen as the best solution to address the medical problems facing the American people, given that income inequality is a reality here. With the United Healthcare Insurance Scheme, the people can access medication at affordable rates. Other existing government schemes are meant to achieve the same results such as Medicaid. The scheme is important as it supplements the role of the other one.

Evaluation of the Workforce Management Program

Employees at United Healthcare Insurance Scheme are organized to work on a results-based pay system. This is the best…

Collaborative Spirit

A spirit of collaboration is essential for successful ventures because a collaborative spirit allows each person's talents and energies to shine in the service of a common goal or set of objectives. I have been lucky to have the motivation and opportunity to work with like-minded individuals in my field, which is how I came to understand the importance of a collaborative spirit. In my third year of undergraduate studies at the University of Zagreb, I got together with some fellow students to form an organization called the Healthcare Club. The Healthcare Club was designed to promote the interests of students in the healthcare and pharmaceutical fields. The purpose of the Healthcare Club was to connect students with relevant faculty, as well as extend the general curriculum offered at the university with things like case studies. One of the reasons why we started the Healthcare Club was that…

care in regards to EM when patients go from outpatient to inpatient to specialists

Effective Communication

The CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) uses the phrase 'care transition' to refer to patient transference between care settings (like hospitals, nursing facilities, home care, primary care, specialist care, or long-term patient care). Care coordination throughout the continuum of healthcare proves critical to patient treatment management, execution and assessment. Transferring health information of patients from one care location or level to another during patient transfers guarantees care continuity and fosters effective patient treatment. Direct communication between different healthcare providers is vital to smooth patient transition across healthcare settings. Partial knowledge of patient health details and absence of an EH (electronic health record) that may be accessed anywhere will restrict acute care professionals' capacity of accessing the patient's community pharmacy and ambulatory care records, especially if the professional is not the patient's primary…

In the U.S healthcare environment, the clinical practice guidelines are the effective healthcare protocol to enhance patient’s safety as well as achieving evidence-based practice. The clinical guidelines provide recommendations to the best available practice to assist clinicians and other healthcare professionals to deliver best and quality care. More importantly, the clinical practice guidelines are designed to optimize patients’ care using the systematic assessment and evidence based review to assess pros and cons of the alternative care options. The guidelines serve as the strongest resources to assist the healthcare professionals to make clinical decisions as well as incorporating evidence gained through practice and scientific investigations into patient practice.  Healthcare organizations develop the guidelines in form and policies, which are endorsed across the organization to create a platform that employees will follow and holding employees accountable to achieve a standard of care.  

Clabsi Hospital is one of the best healthcare organizations…

Standardization and Priorities of Healthcare Organizations
Introduction
As Leotsakos et al. (2014) note, standardization of patient safety in healthcare organizations has not proceeded with a great deal of progress in recent years though monumental steps have been made to increase patient safety in the industry. For that reason the World Health Organization (2018) has made it a priority to address standardization by initiating the High 5s project “to facilitate the development, implementation and evaluation of standard operating procedures (SOPs) within to achieve measurable, significant and sustainable reductions in a number of challenging patient safety problems.” These developments are still needed and to improve safety, Gandalf and Merlino (n.d.) have discussed how transparency, healthcare reform, and critical issues such as market share play a role in the advancement of patient safety standardization in the industry. This paper will examine the points made by Gandalf and Merlino in their podcast “The State…

Function #1: Mitigation

At this stage, gradual and long-term steps are taken to ensure that disasters do not occur, or that, when they do, they cause minimal damage. Actions at this stage include the identification of hazards, the research of the causes which generate the disaster, the creation of means in which to modify the causes of the disasters, the development of means which reduce the community's vulnerability to the disaster, the efforts to better consolidate old buildings, the construction of disaster-resistant buildings, the education of the population or the provision of insurance.

At this stage, the responsibilities of the central government include:

The identification of hazards and the research of their causes

The research as to how the causes of the disaster can be modified

The offering of research and development grants to local projects

The promulgation of buildings safety standards

elative to the competencies of the local governments…

PPACA

On March 23, 2010 the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) was signed into law by President Barack Obama. Along with the Health Care Reconciliation Act of 2010, the PPACA became part of the overall Health Care Reform concept of 2010. The health care reform process was promoted as a way to completely transform the health care industry and ensure that all Americans received affordable health care. hile supporters praise the legislation as a revolutionary law which will benefit ordinary Americans, critics claim that the Obama Administration used the health care reform process as a means of gaining control over the entire health care system. In an attempt to compare and contrast the provisions of this new law, this essay will discuss several provisions of the new health care legislation and compare the benefits as well as the criticisms of them.

Section 5501 of the PPACA provides for…

Affordable Care Act

A current law that impacts the delivery of human services is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, signed into law by President Barack Obama in March 2010. The legislation (most commonly known as the Affordable Care Act but also referred to as "Obamacare") basically overhauls the existing healthcare statutes and is aimed specifically at reducing the number of Americans who are not covered by health insurance.

Reliable Sources Available to Cover the Law's Implications

There are multiple reliable sources from which to gather information about this major change in the way the healthcare services are available in the United States. The law's implications are spelled out very clearly by the federal website www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov (National Center for Biotechnology Information / National Library of Medicine / National Institutes of Health) (Rosenbaum, 2011).

The Act "…establishes the basic legal protections" that up until now have not be available to…

Nurse of the Future

The developed worlds are becoming older. America's population is approaching retirement age due in large part to the baby boomer generation. Those individuals born between 1946 and 1964 will be eligible for more social security and retirement benefits as time passes. As such, pharmaceutical companies, health services, and the medical industry at large will benefit from this influx of older individuals. As competition for new patents, facilities, drugs and more becomes more intense, companies will undoubtedly require more personnel to handle the subsequent demand. Those companies that can continually innovate and provide products, services and personnel that are demanded will eventually prosper as our population ages. The nursing profession is no different in this regard. They continually push the existing boundaries of science to provide better products and services to society. How they accomplish this task however is very distinct to each type of facility. Fundamental…

Patient Centered Medical Homes

In the 1960s, the medical home concept referred to as patient centered medical home was developed.In order to reform the healthcare in the U.S.; the patient centered medical homes are evolving as a centerpiece of efforts (Bates, 2010). Basically, PCMH can be defines as a primary care model that offers coordinated and comprehensive care to the patients in order to improve health outcomes. PCMH is also recognized by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA). Patient centered medical homes can be portrayed as a team of people working together in form of a community. The purpose is to improve the health as well as healing of the people in that community. In comparison with the primary care, PCMH is more responsive towards the needs of local patients.

PCMH offers a number of benefits including complementary nutrition as well as wellness counseling along with providing prevention education…

Healthcare

Patient Centered Medical Home

PCMH model leads to reduced cost of care, improved population health" is a medical report authored by Katie Sullivan Published on FierceHealthcare. The report is a summary of the general findings of a report carried out by the Patient-Centered Primary Care Collaborative. According to the research report, the Patient Centered Medical Home has resulted in reduced unnecessary emergency room (ER) and hospital visits, costs of care, and improved population health.

The research methodology employed is the review of literature released between August 2012 and December 2013. This means that a panel of experts reviews all the articles before they accepted for publication. The report achieves quality and merit by restricting the literature to peer review articles that can be relied for scholarly and official use. However, there is no indication of the section process used in identifying the literature to be used. August 2012 to…

Leadership Discussions First Half

Conflicting Obligations

Identify at least two ethical dilemmas that occur when you are in a position of leadership. What makes the dilemmas ethical? Would you expect each person to react to the dilemma in the same way?

People have different ways of reacting to dilemmas. In my position as a leader, I have encountered a situation where I had to choose tow rights. In this case, I was entangled in a dilemma because I value both student achievement and teacher autonomy when I pursue to enact policies that lower expectations. This was a heightened conflict because all school heads are public officials obligated to various people with competing interests and values. My position comes with dilemmas such as deciding whether to report teachers with questionable grading decisions. This dilemma is ethical because it puts pressure on the need to make ethical decisions. Further, in my response,…

NxStage

Company Background

Environmental Scan

Five Forces & Value Chain

Strategic Alternatives

Strategic Plan

Acquisitions

esource Allocation

NxStage is a medical equipment manufacturer specializing in hemodialysis products for use in the home. Their main flagship, NxStage SystemOne, constitute two-thirds of the company's revenues. The product has been on the market for several years, but NxStage has never been able to turn a profit, nor has it been able to develop a viable second major product. This has created a strategic dilemma for the company as to how best to enhance shareholder value going forward.

The external environment is generally challenging, especially in light of regulatory changes that aim to drive down the cost of medical care, not necessarily good for a company like NxStage that has a differentiated product. There is some demand for the product, but also substitution from dialysis clinics, which can be offered at a lower total…

Welcome fellow nurses and other medical professionals or advocates. Like me, you are surely aware of the vastly and quickly changing climate in the medical community when it comes to things like continuum of care, accountable care organizations, medical homes and nurse-managed health clinics. I will speak about all of these things and what the future would seem to hold for each of them.

When it comes to the overall continuum of care, the Affordable Care Act was certainly a game-changer and will greatly shape the future of the United States medical system. There has been a swelling in the efforts by many healthcare providers to manage what is often called the "continuum of care" for patients. The doctors and health systems that exist out there are being formed and shaped into a number of different structures and agreements with the aim to achieve essentially one basic thing….to manage the…