Policymaking Processes

For your final project, you will analyze an issue and propose a course of action. You will choose from one of three scenarios: One scenario will involve an issue with electronic medical records and quality improvement; one will revolve around managed care contract negotiations and population health improvement; and one will focus on strategic planning and capacity to provide services in the community. You will draft a letter of proposal outlining a recommended course of action, directed to executive management. You will then assume the role of executive management and draft an email message to organizational staff responding to the proposal (see Final Project Part II Guidelines and Rubric). Health policy professionals and healthcare managers are routinely tasked with translating healthcare policies and management decisions into concrete steps for healthcare organizations and practitioners. This means that health policy professionals and healthcare managers must be able to convert abstract policies and practices into strategies to promote population health improvement and healthcare organizational change. At the same time, health policy professionals and healthcare managers have to juggle competing obligations for organizational resources, medical staff time, technology funding, and contract deliverables. This final project will give you an opportunity to use the skills you have developed throughout this course to translate policies and practices into concrete steps for a healthcare organization and a healthcare provider and manage competing priorities. In the first part of your final project, you will select a health policy and management scenario and draft a letter to a healthcare management executive in which you explain the issue presented in the scenario, analyze applicable policy-making options, identify organizational planning issues, and recommend solutions to organizational and community health issues using effective strategies that you develop. This assessment addresses the following course outcomes:

 Analyze healthcare policymaking processes for informing policy solutions to public health problems.

 Propose strategies for communicating and promoting individual, community, and population health by examining public health policy and population health programs.

 Analyze methods for financing, evaluating, and improving healthcare delivery, operations, and facilities for managing health behaviors and the delivery of healthcare.

 Recommend solutions to organizational and community health issues that utilize principles of management theory and population health improvement.

 Analyze the role of budgeting, governance, and strategic-planning principles within healthcare organizations in promoting quality and organizational improvement.

 Develop effective strategies that use healthcare delivery principles and technology for responding to emerging public health issues and trends The project is divided into three milestones, which will be submitted at various points throughout the course to scaffold learning and ensure quality final submissions. These milestones will be submitted in Modules Three, Five, and Seven. Your final proposal letter will be due in Module Nine.

Final Project Part I: Proposal Letter In Module Nine, you will submit your final proposal letter. Revise your previous milestones based on instructor feedback, compile these components, and add your fully developed introduction and conclusion to submit your final proposal in the form of a letter. It should be a complete, polished artifact containing all of the critical elements of the final product. It should reflect the incorporation of feedback gained throughout the course. You should expect to modify your milestones as your understanding of the scenario and course material changes throughout the course. Be sure you understand your instructor’s feedback. If you do not, reach out and ask questions. It is important that you know how to act on feedback so that your proposal letter is in the best form it can be. After you capture all feedback, write your conclusion first and your introduction last. When you write your conclusion, capture the essence of the issue and your recommendation. Focus on actionable next steps so that the executive knows the path forward. Policy analyses that identify problems but do not provide a clear path forward are frustrating for executives—they want to know what they can do! After you finish your conclusion, look back over your entire Part I submission. Your introduction should provide an overview of the entire proposal letter, without going into great detail. Think of it as a movie preview—you want to entice the audience to buy a ticket, but you do not want to show the entire movie.