Instructions
During Week 2, you examined and prioritized the trends, issues, and challenges facing U.S. healthcare executives and prepared a table of the issues you will address as the healthcare executive. This week, you will focus your attention on the issues and trends as they impact your organization and your community. The American Hospital Association conducted an environmental scan to gauge what is needed for communities to rebound following a major healthcare event and they envision a society of healthy communities where all individuals reach their highest potential for health. It is only with the partnership of healthcare organizations and community health organizations this goal can be obtained.
For this assignment, you will build on the Week 2 assignment. In a Word document, you will create the Issue Brief Working Template grid as depicted here, which includes your priority issues/trends from last week’s assignment and you will include the healthcare needs of your community. You will access the 2020 County Health Rankings at the link shown in your Resources for this week. Once on the website, enter your mailing Zip code or select an area you wish to research. Once you have entered the Zip code, a screen will show the health outcomes for the area you selected. Scroll down to Preventable Hospital Stays and click on the TREND symbol. This action will open an overlay informational graph that shows the preventable hospital stays in your selected area as compared to the state and the United States. Formulate your strategy to address the issue of preventable hospital stays. An example of a preventable hospital stay would be the readmission of a patient with congestive heart failure (CHF) or a patient with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) that results in preventable hospital stays. How would your healthcare organization research and collaborate with community health organizations, such as public health to address this problem that affects hospital reimbursements?
This week’s grid is expanded from Week 2 and contains additional elements. The additional elements are those found in an Issue Brief, a short document used for internal discussions examining issues and their impact on the organization. You will use Issue Briefs in a future assignment and the information you provide in this assignment will be utilized. An example of the grid is provided here, and you may wish to display your grid document in the landscape orientation.
Length: For this assignment, be sure to include a title page and reference page. The length will depend on how you summarize your responses within each column.
Resources: A minimum of 1 reference is required for each issue.
Upload your document and click the Submit to Dropbox button.
Issue Brief Working Template
Table 2. Issue Brief Working Template
Issue/Trend
Organizational Area of Impact
Strategies/
Recommendations to Address
Evidence Supporting Strategies and/or Recommendations
References for the Supporting Evidence
Contact Information
Ex.: Financial challenges— Medicare reimbursements—Value-based Payment Program
Ex.: Business Office—Finance; Accounting; Budget Office, Facilities Management, Purchasing, Human Resources, Patient Services
Examine hospital’s quality reporting submissions to Medicare to assure regulatory deadlines are met; examine length of stay to determine whether standardization of care would be beneficial