Newsletter Introduction
In Weeks 1 through 4, you’ll produce a newsletter that covers the content discussed in each assignment. The purpose of the newsletter is to provide advice for health care leaders on how to apply the skills and concepts to similar scenarios that arise in the workplace. For each part of the assignment,
Create an article that addresses each prompt.
Frame your articles as if you are writing to leaders in your organization.
Review the Writing Center resource Considering Audience (Links to an external site.) for information on how to do this.
You can create a newsletter using a tool or your choosing, such as Canvas, or use the Newsletter Template Download Newsletter Template.
You can also add images or figures that are formatted according to APA Style as outlined in the Writing Center’s resource Table, Images, and Appendices (Links to an external site.).
You can find images from the websites: Unsplash (Links to an external site.) and Pexels (Links to an external site.).
These websites provide free images without attribution or commercial or non-commercial licenses. However, it is important to follow all copyright laws. You can find information on these laws by visiting the webpages Copyright Basics (Links to an external site.) and What is Copyright? (Links to an external site.)
For the assignment, you must use a minimum of three to four scholarly or credible sources that are formatted according to APA Style as outlined in the Writing Center. You can learn more by reviewing the resources Formatting Your References List (Links to an external site.) and APA: Citing Within Your Paper (Links to an external site.).
Part 1 – Introduction and Scenario
The focus of this assignment is to identify and analyze leadership practices at an imaginary health system. You are an essential member of the management team involved in the scenario described below:
Lake View Hospital is a 25-bed critical access hospital located in rural Minnesota. Lake View’s director of primary care and specialty services, and the president, who also serves as CEO, identified a need to restructure their physician and advanced practice provider (APP) coverage model to improve physician and APP recruitment (providers), to ensure provider retention, and to better serve their patients and the community. Changes related to health care reform, a survey of patients’ expectations of services, and the expectations of new providers looking to practice in a rural setting all factored into their decision to explore the need to make significant changes in their delivery models. Several complex challenges were identified early on and were discussed with their provider partners. They engaged in brainstorming, scenario planning, and other productive conversations on what changes they should work toward and why they should try to make them. All these changes happened during a relatively short period of time and after a long period of providing services at the status quo.
Summary of Changes Implemented include the following:
Provider contracts and recruitment. They restructured their provider contracts across the medical clinic to align with the organization’s strategic plan and to better serve their patients. The goal was to be transparent with the providers and create standard contract models for current providers and for the providers they were working hard to recruit. These changes were achieved through collaboration between administrators, consisting of Lake View’s president and CEO, director of primary care and specialty services, director of finance, and their team of eight providers at the time. They also modified their provider recruitment strategy to take more ownership of the process internally at Lake View, and to connect with more providers across the state to share what they were working on at Lake View. They had many challenges to work through with their current providers to maintain internal equity, and to respect current employment terms, past agreements, and compliance requirements.
Physician call obligations. Prior to this recent restructuring, Lake View’s physicians covered hospital call 24-7 and 365 days on a rotating basis. This was taking a toll on their long-term physicians after decades of covering this obligation and was seen as a burden by the newer physicians who were beginning their careers and starting their families. New physicians who were being recruited by Lake View also saw this call obligation as a negative to joining Lake View’s practice in contrast to some of the outpatient-only practices available in the region. The administration team and physician team again worked collaboratively on how to best solve this dilemma during internal team meetings and offsite retreats, and they discussed the issue with individuals. Their goal was to eliminate overnight hospital call, but still ensure the appropriate call coverage to operate and grow the inpatient services that their patients were requesting. They evaluated and considered many different creative and innovative coverage models (e.g., hospitalist program, telemedicine, contracts, etc.) before all deciding on their current call coverage model. They had to work closely with their emergency department physicians throughout the process to ensure success with their newly agreed upon model. They decided on a model in which the primary care physicians cover calls from 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. seven days a week, and the emergency department (ED) physicians cover the ED and inpatient unit from 6:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. They implemented a successful communication and handoff process from the ED physician to the primary care physician to ensure seamless patient care and quality. The change was identified as a significant factor in successfully recruiting two high-quality and sought-after physicians looking to sign with an organization in the Lake View region.
Article 1
For the scenario above,
Summarize the case study, including describing the leadership practices Lake View used to promote innovation.
Describe the techniques used to reduce resistance to change for each of the problems listed above.
Measure lessons learned by Lake View and propose a valid conclusion.
