Week 2 DQ 1

Briefly describe how the risk management program at the organization where you work (or at that of a typical health care organization) addresses social media and patient information privacy. Provide three examples of risk management steps your health care organization (or another health care organization) could take to further protect patient information.

Benchmark - Risk Management Program Analysis - Part One

The purpose of this assignment is to analyze a health care risk management program.

The concepts in this assignment will be expanded on in the Topic 2 assignment and the Topic 3 benchmark assignment.

Conduct research on approaches to risk management processes, policies, and concerns in your current or anticipated professional arena to find an example of a risk management plan. Look for a plan with sufficient content to be able to complete this assignment successfully. In a 1,000‐1,250-word paper, provide an analysis of the risk management plan that includes the following:

Description of the health care organization to which the plan applies and the role risk management plays in that setting.

Summary of the type of risk management plan you selected (new employee, specific audience, community‐focused, etc.) and your rationale for selecting that example.

Description of the standard administrative steps and processes in a typical health care organization's risk management program compared to the administrative steps and processes you identify in your selected example plan. (Note: For standard risk management policies and procedures, look up the Medicare Improvement for Patients and Provider Act (MIPPA)-approved accrediting body that regulates the risk management standards in your chosen health care sector, and consider federal, state, and local statutes as well.)

Evaluation of your selected risk management plan's compliance with the standards of its corresponding MIPPA-approved accrediting body relevant to privacy, health care worker safety, and patient safety.

Analysis of the key agencies and organizations that regulate the administration of safe health care in your current or future area of concentration and an evaluation of the roles each one plays in the risk management oversight process.

Proposed recommendations or changes you would implement in your risk management program example to enhance, improve, or secure the compliance standards.

Proposed recommendation or changes you would implement to build and support a culture of compassion and concern for patients and health care employee safety. Base your response on the Christian worldview principle that work within the public arena should be performed with compassion, justice, and concern for the common good.

In addition to your textbook and the GCU "Statement on the Integration of Faith and Work," you are required to support your analysis with at least three credible health-related resources.

Week 2

Week 2 DQ 1

What is the purpose of reporting and collecting data from incident reports? What are the common types of incidents found in the hospital? How do incident reports improve patient and family safety practices? Are hospitals allowed to document details from an incident report on the patient's medical record?

Week 2 DQ 2

Research the role of an administrator versus that of a nonmanagement staff member in dealing with a workers' compensation incident in a typical health care organization. What are the minimal responsibilities and reporting duties for each? What recommendations would you suggest for improving organizational compliance with regulatory requirements at the staff level?

Educational Program on Risk Management

The purpose of this assignment is to create an educational program that supports the implementation of risk management strategies in a health care organization.

In this assignment, you will develop an "in‐service"‐style educational risk management program presentation for the employer and employees of a particular health care organization. Select your topic for this educational session from one of the proposed recommendations or changes you suggested in the Topic 1 benchmark assignment to enhance, improve, or secure compliance standards in your chosen risk management plan example.

Develop a 10-12-slide presentation (including a title slide, a reference slide, and slide notes that provide a detailed explanation of your research) that outlines the following points about your chosen topic:

Introduction: Identify the risk management topic you have chosen to address and explain why it is important within your health care sector.

Rationale: Explain how this risk management strategy is lacking within your selected organization's current risk management plan and describe how its responsibility for implementation will better meet local, state, and federal compliance standards.

Support: Provide data that indicate the need for this proposed risk management initiative and explain how it falls under the organization's legal responsibility to provide a safe health care facility and work environment.

Implementation: Describe the steps to implement the proposed strategy in your selected health care organization.

Challenges: Predict obstacles the health care organization may face in executing this risk management strategy and challenges for building a culture of faith, compassion, and concern for patients, families, and employees, and propose solutions to navigate or preempt these potentially difficult outcomes.

Evaluation: Outline your plan to evaluate the success of the proposed risk management program and how well it meets compliance with operational risk management policies in the organization's short-term, long-term, and end goals, which includes key employer and employee metrics that will be used for measuring the success of the risk management program.

Opportunities: Recommend additional risk management improvements in adjacent areas of influence that the organization could or should address moving forward.

In addition to your textbook and the GCU "Statement on the Integration of Faith and Work," you are required to support your analysis with at least three credible health-related resources and at least three peer-reviewed resources.

Refer to the resource, "Creating Effective PowerPoint Presentations," located in the Student Success Center, for additional guidance on completing this assignment in the appropriate style.

While APA style is not required for the body of this assignment, solid academic writing is expected, and documentation of sources should be presented using APA formatting guidelines, which can be found in the APA Style Guide, located in the Student Success Center.

This assignment uses a rubric. Please review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion.

You are required to submit this assignment to LopesWrite. A link to the LopesWrite technical support articles is located in Class Resources if you need assistance.

Week 3

Week 3 DQ1

The Patient Self-Determination Act (PSDA) was implemented to allow patients to state "Do Not Resuscitate" (DNR) or to assign a surrogate decision-maker in the event that the individual is unable to make the decision. What relationship does an ethics committee have in enforcing the advance directives of the patients in their care? What cultural and religious beliefs affect the administration of providing care to the patient?

Week 3 DQ 2

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) publishes a list of health care-acquired conditions (HACs) that reasonably could have been prevented through the application of risk management strategies. What actions has your health care organization (or have health care organizations in general) implemented to manage or prevent these "never events" from happening within their health care facilities?

Benchmark - Risk Management Program Analysis - Part Two

The purpose of this assignment is to analyze how an organization's quality and improvement processes contribute to its risk management program.

This assignment builds on the concepts from the Topic 1 benchmark assignment.

Assume that the sample risk management program you analyzed in Topic 1 was implemented and is now currently in use by your health care organization. Further assume that your supervisor has asked you to create a high‐level report of this new risk management program to share with a group of administrative personnel from a newly created community health organization in your state who have enlisted your organization's assistance in developing their own risk management policies and procedures.

In a 1,000-1,250‐word report, address the following points regarding your health care organization and its risk management program:

Explain the role of your organization's Medicare Improvement for Patients and Provider Act (MIPPA)-approved accreditation body (e.g., JC, ACR, IAC) in the evaluation of your institution's quality improvement and risk management processes.

Describe the roles that different levels of administrative personnel play in health care ethics and establishing or sustaining employer- and employee-focused organizational risk management strategies and operational policies.

Explain how your organization's risk management and compliance programs support ethical standards, patient consent, informed consent, and patient rights and responsibilities.

Explain the legal and ethical responsibilities health care professionals face in upholding risk management policies and administering safe health care at your organization.

Explain how your organization's quality improvement processes support and contribute to the prevention of sentinel events and to its overall journey to excellence.

Communicate how to integrate the Christian perspective of human value and dignity, along with ethical decision-making as it relates to patients, families, and health care employees

In addition to your textbook and the GCU "Statement on the Integration of Faith and Work," you are required to support your analysis with at least three credible health-related resources.

Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the APA Style Guide, located in the Student Success Center.

This assignment uses a rubric. Please review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion.

You are required to submit this assignment to LopesWrite. A link to the LopesWrite technical support articles is located in Class Resources if you need assistance.

Topic 4

DQ 1

Describe one of the safety committees your organization uses and how it reduces risk within your organization. Who are the general members of the group, how often do they meet, and is there a regulatory requirement that they report or publish notes? Is having safety committees a good use of the staff's time or would another method that still addresses the safety goal of this group be more efficient?

Dq 2

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS), and the Joint Commission (JC) require that health care organizations maintain risk management programs to address infection control. Detail three measures that your health care organization (or any health care organization) could implement, beyond what is currently in practice, to support the delivery of safe health care

services and avoid the spread of infection (e.g., placing hand washing devices at all of the public entrances of the health care facility).

Organizational Risk Management Interview

The purpose of this assignment is to gain real-world insight into how risk management programs operate within health care organizations.

Select a local health care organization where you can conduct an interview with an employee who is involved in risk management processes. This organization can be your current employer or a different health care facility in your community. Acute care, urgent care, large multi‐provider private medical clinics, assisted living facilities, and community/public health clinical facilities are all ideal options to complete the requirements of this assignment. Select an individual who can provide sufficient information regarding how their organization manages risk within its facility to answer the questions below.

In your interview, address the following:

Risk management strategies used in the organization's risk control program, along with specific examples.

How the facility's educational risk management program addresses key professional, legal, and ethical issues, such as prevention of negligence, malpractice litigation, and vicarious liability.

Policies the facility has implemented that address how to manage emergency triage in high‐risk areas of health care service delivery (e.g., narcotics inventories, declared pregnancy policies, blood-borne disease vector, etc.), and identify how these align with Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standards.

Challenges the organization faces in managing and controlling high-risk health care (e.g., infectious diseases, nuclear medicine, abortion, class 4 narcotics/opioids, etc.), and include how cultural and religious beliefs affect the provision of patient care.

Strategies the facility utilizes to monitor, evaluate, and maintain compliance within its risk management program.

After conducting the interview, compose a 750‐1,000-word summary analysis of the interview that includes the prompts above, in conjunction with the interviewee's responses. In addition, include the following elements in your response:

An assessment of the organization's risk management program, including how it attends to high-risk health care and legal concerns.

Action steps you would take to improve one area of the organization's risk management program, along with your rationale for doing so.

Cite appropriate references as needed to support your statements and rationale.

Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the APA Style Guide, located in the Student Success Center.

This assignment uses a rubric. Please review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion.

You are required to submit this assignment to LopesWrite. A link to the LopesWrite technical support articles is located in Class Resources if you need assistance.

Telemedicine and Risk Management

The purpose of this assignment is to demonstrate your understanding of the responsibility of a health care organization in establishing a risk management program that addresses liability and malpractice.

Assume your organization will begin offering synchronous telemedicine services and you have been asked to present information about incorporating an enterprise risk management program that mitigates risks and provides strategies for operational (credentialing, standard of care, and documentation) clinical/patient safety, financial, and legal/regulatory (HIPAA, HITECH, CMS), state-specific regulations, and technology.

Write a 750-1,000-word report to the administrative team that:

Describes how the risk management program will address areas of concern over operational, clinical/patient safety, financial, legal/regulatory, and state-specific regulations, as well as technology.

Explains the risk for potential liability and malpractice upon the provider or organization if policies and procedures do not address identified risk concerns.

In addition to your textbook, you are required to support your analysis with at least three credible health-related resources.

Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the APA Style Guide, located in the Student Success Center.

This assignment uses a rubric. Please review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion.

You are required to submit this assignment to LopesWrite. A link to the LopesWrite technical support articles is located in Class Resources if you need assistance.

Week 5

Topic 5 DQ 1

Health care organizations continually face challenges from various regulatory and government agencies while also being bound by managed care organization (MCO) standards. Describe two key reform factors that you believe will need to be addressed by future health care workers or leaders and explain why. Additionally, what role does adherence to MCO standards play in your future health care vision?

Discussion 2

The Affordable Care Act (ACA), signed into law in 2010, has three primary goals, which are to make affordable health insurance available to more people; expand the Medicaid program to cover all adults with income below 138% of the federal poverty level; and to support innovative medical care delivery methods designed to lower costs of health care generally.

As a leader wishing to promote and facilitate patient engagement by the organization, what are creative activities that can be designed to communicate the impact the ACA has on patients? Why is it important for consumers of health to understand health care laws and regulations?

Reflective Analysis: Risk Management and the Role of Managed Care

The purpose of this assignment is to analyze the role of managed care organizations within health care and risk management programs.

Reflect on and evaluate the role that the managed care organization (MCO) plays in today's health care environment by developing a 750-1,000-word response that addresses the following:

Explain what a health care organization's administrative role is in executing risk management policies and ensuring compliance with managed care organization (MCO) standards.

Explain what value the regulatory statutes of a typical MCO provide to a health care organization and include strategies pertaining to policies such as conflict resolution and risk management that affect patients and families as well as employees and employers.

Explain what MCO responsibilities relevant to the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) focus on fraud, waste, and abuse laws.

Identify strategies that can be implemented for developing a culture of reporting and transparency.

In addition to your textbook, you are required to support your analysis with at least three credible health-related resources.

Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the APA Style Guide, located in the Student Success Center.

This assignment uses a rubric. Please review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion.

You are required to submit this assignment to LopesWrite. A link to the LopesWrite technical support articles is located in Class Resources if you need assistance.