HSM 541 Week 6 Director of Operations for Middlefield Hospital -

HSM 541 Week 6 Director of Operations for Middlefield Hospital

WEEK 6 YOU DECIDE ACTIVITY

Scenario Summary

You have been the Director of Operations for Middlefield Hospital for 2 and a half years and finally resolved the workforce challenges that plagued the hospital, and in particular the mental health unit. In a recent meeting, the chief financial officer (CFO) indicated that the financial performance of the hospital’s mental health unit has been deteriorating over the last 6 months. The hospital is not meeting its budget and he is concerned about the future. The new facility across town has continued to cut into Middlefield’s market share by admitting more patients. The number of admissions to Middlefield Hospital is declining each month, and more uninsured patients are seeking services at your facility. You convene the Middlefield Hospital management team and discover a few interesting facts, which are identified below.

The payer mix of Middlefield Hospital is comprised of more and more Medicare, Medicaid, and uninsured patients, and fewer patients have commercial insurance. This is reducing overall reimbursement and net income for the hospital.

The nearby hospital that competes with Middlefield has opened a wellness center that offers a comprehensive array of preventative and wellness services to the community. This facility is attracting young families to seek services at this location.

Most of Middlefield’s managed care contracts are more than 2 years old. There are little reliable utilization and reimbursement data available. No one at Middlefield Hospital is assigned to manage these contracts or maintain ongoing relationships with managed care companies.

The Joint Commission survey is scheduled for next year, and there are significant problems with the hospital’s quality improvement program.

The health plan offered to employees is getting more expensive each year. In fact, the costs are increasing at a rate of 20% each year. This is adding significantly to the hospital’s operational costs.

The inpatient mental health services and neonatal intensive care unit continue to lose money for the hospital.

Your Role/Assignment

The board of directors has asked that you provide a 750-word report (double-spaced in APA or other Devry-approved format) detailing your strategies and recommendations to improve the financial performance of the hospital by focusing on the mental health unit. The strategies and recommendations should be as specific as possible and include identifying resources that are necessary to implement the strategies. Also, describe the outcomes expected from implementing your recommendations. Your primary text and journal and website research must be used as a reference to support your analysis. Use at least three references.

Available Resources

Review the points of view of the following people to obtain further insight on this assignment.

Key Players

Dr. McCrae: Psychiatrist

I am a psychiatrist and admit my patients to the mental health inpatient unit at Middlefield. It is the only psychiatric inpatient unit available in the community, and the care provided is excellent. I understand the program loses money, but the hospital has a community obligation to offer services to patients who need mental health care.

Aretha Holly: Pharmacy Technician

I love the health plan offered by Middlefield Hospital. The plan really meets the needs of my family. The copays and deductibles are so low and I get my prescriptions for free. Also, I can go to any provider I choose. I hope they don’t make any changes to the plan, because I am worried that I may not be able to afford it.

Barbara Seville: Director of Quality Improvement

Middlefield’s quality improvement activities are not effective anymore. We do lots of data collection and reporting, but there is little improvement in the quality of care. Most staff members believe that we already provide quality patient care and don’t see why we are putting resources into this function. I think we are relying too much on our past reputation.

Lopes Write Policy

For assignments that need to be submitted to Lopes Write, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me.

Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes.

Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own?

Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score.

Late Policy

The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies.

Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances.

If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect.

I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension.

As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading.

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Communication

Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me:

Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class.

Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours.

Important information for writing discussion questions and participation

Welcome to class

Hello class and welcome to the class and I will be your instructor for this course. This is a -week course and requires a lot of time commitment, organization, and a high level of dedication. Please use the class syllabus to guide you through all the assignments required for the course. I have also attached the classroom policies to this announcement to know your expectations for this course. Please review this document carefully and ask me any questions if you do. You could email me at any time or send me a message via the “message” icon in halo if you need to contact me. I check my email regularly, so you should get a response within 24 hours. If you have not heard from me within 24 hours and need to contact me urgently, please send a follow up text to

I strongly encourage that you do not wait until the very last minute to complete your assignments. Your assignments in weeks 4 and 5 require early planning as you would need to present a teaching plan and interview a community health provider. I advise you look at the requirements for these assignments at the beginning of the course and plan accordingly. I have posted the YouTube link that explains all the class assignments in detail. It is required that you watch this 32-minute video as the assignments from week 3 through 5 require that you follow the instructions to the letter to succeed. Failure to complete these assignments according to instructions might lead to a zero. After watching the video, please schedule a one-on-one with me to discuss your topic for your project by the second week of class. Use this link to schedule a 15-minute session. Please, call me at the time of your appointment on my number. Please note that I will NOT call you.

Please, be advised I do NOT accept any assignments by email. If you are having technical issues with uploading an assignment, contact the technical department and inform me of the issue. If you have any issues that would prevent you from getting your assignments to me by the deadline, please inform me to request a possible extension. Note that working fulltime or overtime is no excuse for late assignments. There is a 5%-point deduction for every day your assignment is late. This only applies to approved extensions. Late assignments will not be accepted.

If you think you would be needing accommodations due to any reasons, please contact the appropriate department to request accommodations.

Plagiarism is highly prohibited. Please ensure you are citing your sources correctly using APA 7th edition. All assignments including discussion posts should be formatted in APA with the appropriate spacing, font, margin, and indents. Any papers not well formatted would be returned back to you, hence, I advise you review APA formatting style. I have attached a sample paper in APA format and will also post sample discussion responses in subsequent announcements.

Your initial discussion post should be a minimum of 200 words and response posts should be a minimum of 150 words. Be advised that I grade based on quality and not necessarily the number of words you post. A minimum of TWO references should be used for your initial post. For your response post, you do not need references as personal experiences would count as response posts. If you however cite anything from the literature for your response post, it is required that you cite your reference. You should include a minimum of THREE references for papers in this course. Please note that references should be no more than 5 years old except recommended as a resource for the class. Furthermore, for each discussion board question, you need ONE initial substantive response and TWO substantive responses to either your classmates or your instructor for a total of THREE responses. There are TWO discussion questions each week, hence, you need a total minimum of SIX discussion posts for each week. I usually post a discussion question each week. You could also respond to these as it would count towards your required SIX discussion posts for the week.

I understand this is a lot of information to cover in 5 weeks, however, the Bible says in Philippians 4:13 that we can do all things through Christ that strengthens us. Even in times like this, we are encouraged by God’s word that we have that ability in us to succeed with His strength. I pray that each and every one of you receives strength for this course and life generally as we navigate through this pandemic that is shaking our world today. Relax and enjoy the course!

Hi Class,

Please read through the following information on writing a Discussion question response and participation posts.

Contact me if you have any questions.

Important information on Writing a Discussion Question

Your response needs to be a minimum of 150 words (not including your list of references)
There needs to be at least TWO references with ONE being a peer reviewed professional journal article.
Include in-text citations in your response
Do not include quotes—instead summarize and paraphrase the information
Follow APA-7th edition
Points will be deducted if the above is not followed

Participation –replies to your classmates or instructor

A minimum of 6 responses per week, on at least 3 days of the week.
Each response needs at least ONE reference with citations—best if it is a peer reviewed journal article
Each response needs to be at least 75 words in length (does not include your list of references)
Responses need to be substantive by bringing information to the discussion or further enhance the discussion. Responses of “I agree” or “great post” does not count for the word count.
Follow APA 7th edition
Points will be deducted if the above is not followed
Remember to use and follow APA-7th edition for all weekly assignments, discussion questions, and participation points.
Here are some helpful links
Student paper example
Citing Sources
The Writing Center is a great resource