Policy Proposal Presentation

Record a slide presentation with audio voiceover, supported by 8-12-slides, for one of the stakeholder groups identified in your Assessment 2 Policy Proposal, which addresses current performance shortfalls, the reasons why new policy and practice guidelines are needed to eliminate those shortfalls, and how the group’s work will benefit from the changes.

Introduction

It is important that health care leaders be able to clearly articulate policy positions and recommendations and garner buy-in and support from stakeholder groups for policy and practice changes in their organizations. Unfortunately, effective communication is often lacking. Consequently, it is important for health care leaders, when leading change, to ensure that clear and open communication is ongoing and informative.

An important aspect of change leadership is the ability to address diverse groups of stakeholders and create buy-in and support for your ideas and proposals for change. This assessment provides you with an opportunity to demonstrate and hone these skills.

Record a slide presentation, with audio voiceover, for one of the stakeholder groups you identified in your Assessment 2 Policy Proposal. Inform the group of current performance shortfalls, introduce the proposed policy, explain why the policy is needed, and present policy-driven practice guidelines to resolve the performance issue. You must also obtain buy-in from the group by explaining the positive effects of the policy and practice guidelines on their work.

Note: Remember that you can submit all, or a portion of, your draft presentation to Smarthinking for feedback, before you submit the final version for this assessment. If you plan on using this free service, be mindful of the turnaround time of 24–48 hours for receiving feedback.

Requirements

The presentation requirements outlined below correspond to the scoring guide criteria, so be sure to address each main point. Read the performance-level descriptions for each criterion to see how your work will be assessed. In addition, be sure to note the requirements for presentation format and length and for supporting evidence.

• Summarize your proposed organizational policy and practice guidelines.
  • Identify applicable local, state, or federal health care policy or law that prescribes relevant performance benchmarks that your policy proposal addresses.
  • Keep your audience in mind when creating this summary.
• Interpret, for stakeholders, the relevant benchmark metrics that illustrate the need for the proposed policy and practice guidelines.
  • Make sure this is a brief review of the evaluation you completed in your Assessment 1 Dashboard Benchmark Evaluation.
  • Make sure you are interpreting the dashboard metrics in a way that is understandable and meaningful to the stakeholders to whom you are presenting.
• Explain how your proposed policy and practice guidelines will affect how the stakeholder group does its work.
  • How might your proposal alter certain tasks or how the stakeholder group performs them?
  • How might your proposal affect the stakeholder group’s workload?
  • How might your proposal alter the responsibilities of the stakeholder group?
  • How might your proposal improve working conditions for the stakeholder group?
• Explain how your proposed policy and practice guidelines will improve quality and outcomes for the stakeholder group.
  • How are your proposed changes going to improve the quality of the stakeholder group’s work?
  • How will these improvements enable the stakeholder group to be more successful?
  • What evidence supports your conclusions or presents alternative perspectives?
• Present strategies for collaborating with the stakeholder group to implement your proposed policy and practice guidelines.
  • What role will the stakeholder group play in implementing your proposal?
  • Why is the stakeholder group and their collaboration important for successful implementation?
• Deliver a persuasive, coherent, and effective audiovisual presentation.
  • Address the anticipated needs and concerns of your audience.
  • Stay focused on key policy provisions and the impact of practice guidelines on the group.
  • Adhere to presentation best practices.
  • Proofread your presentation slides to minimize errors that could distract the audience and make it more difficult for them to focus on the substance of your proposed policy and practice guidelines.

Example Assessment: You may use the following to give you an idea of what a Proficient or higher rating on the scoring guide would look like:

• Assessment 3 Example [PDF].

Presentation Format and Length

You may use Microsoft PowerPoint or other suitable presentation software to create your slides. If you elect to use an application other than PowerPoint, check with your faculty to avoid potential file compatibility issues.

If using PowerPoint to create your presentation slides, you may use the following presentation as a template.

• SoNHS Professional Presentation Guidelines [PPTX].

Be sure your slide deck includes the following slides:

• Title slide.
  • Presentation title.
  • Your name.
  • Date.
  • Course number and title.
• References (at the end of your presentation). Apply current APA formatting to all citations and references.

Your slide deck should consist of 8–12 slides, not including a title and references slide.

Note: If you have technical difficulties in recording your audio, you may, in place of the audio, provide a complete script of what you intended to say in the notes section of each slide. If you require the use of assistive technology or alternative communication methods to participate in this activity, please contact DisabilityServices@Capella.edu to request accommodations.

Supporting Evidence

Cite 3–5 sources of scholarly, professional, or policy evidence to support your analysis and recommendations.

Portfolio Prompt: You may choose to save your presentation to your ePortfolio.

Competencies Measured

By successfully completing this assessment, you will demonstrate your proficiency in the course competencies through the following assessment scoring guide criteria:

• Competency 1: Analyze relevant health care laws, policies, and regulations; their application; and their effects on organizations, interprofessional teams, and professional practice.
  • Explain how a proposed policy and practice guidelines will affect how a stakeholder group does its work.
• Competency 2: Lead the development and implementation of ethical and culturally sensitive policies that improve health outcomes for individuals, organizations, and populations.
  • Summarize a proposed organizational policy and practice guidelines.
  • Explain how a proposed policy and practice guidelines will improve quality and outcomes for a stakeholder group.
• Competency 3: Evaluate relevant indicators of performance, such as benchmarks, research, and best practices, to inform health care laws and policies for patients, organizations, and populations.
  • Interpret, for stakeholders, the relevant benchmark metrics that illustrate the need for a proposed policy and practice guidelines.
• Competency 4: Develop strategies to work collaboratively with policy makers, stakeholders, and colleagues to address environmental (governmental and regulatory) forces.
  • Present strategies for collaborating with a stakeholder group to implement a proposed policy and practice guidelines.
  • Deliver a persuasive, coherent, and effective audiovisual presentation.

Previous Paper:

Introduction

The benchmarks established by federal, state, and local governments are an essential measure of the performance of a healthcare organization. Hence, collecting and analyzing accurate and timely data on an organization’s compliance with these standards will help improve performance. The organization performance dashboards are an essential management tool that explains the benchmarks met and underperformance (Ghazisaeidi et al., 2015). Moreover, the performance dashboards are essential for measuring and monitoring performance (Ghazisaeidi et al., 2015). There is increased consideration that collaborative teams are a crucial principle and effective means to deliver quality primary healthcare services (Donnelly et al., 2019). A collaborative healthcare team supports the delivery of person-centered care and patient and system outcomes (Donnelly et al., 2019). One aspect which challenges this action in the professional practice setting is the lack of inter-professional collaborative environments. Even though Mercy Medical Center has received accolades for being a top-quality healthcare provider, it has a major improvement area it should focus on. Specifically, the lack of inter-professional collaboration at the facility resulted in below benchmark performance of eye exams, foot exams, and HgbA1c tests for patients with diabetes. This paper will propose organizational policy and practice guidelines that will address this benchmark underperformance and lead to an improvement in quality and performance.

Need for Creating Organizational Policy and Practice Guidelines

Current Benchmark and The Numeric Score for The Underperformance

The Local Public Health Act of Minnesota is deliberate in recording the achievement of statewide goals such as strengthening governmental public health. Mercy Center Dashboards include metrics of new patients by demographic characteristics, the trends in an eye exam, foot exam, and HgbA1c for diabetes patients. Mercy Center Dashboard shows fluctuations in HgbA1c exams and maintained low foot exam. For instance, in Q2 2020, the foot exam declined from 58 in Q2 2019 to 50. Only in Q4 2019 (70%) and Q1 2021 (75%) that the results like the benchmark value of 84% (NHDQR, 2022, June 30). Similarly, the eye exam in the facility also falls below the benchmark value of 75.2 since the highest incidence is reported at 60% in Q4 (NHDQR, 2022, June 30). The benchmark for HgbA1c exams is 79.5 %, and in most of the periods, the facility performance is below 60%. However, for 2020 there is an improvement in the outcome to 72 in Q1 and 78 in Q3.

Impact Of Benchmark Underperformance on The Provision of Quality Care

Diabetes is among the most significant disease and condition which concerns federal and local policymakers. Diabetes patients have a high risk of disability, and hence a comprehensive and coordinated care process is needed to help them manage the condition (Mothojakan et al., 2017). Minnesota has established state performance benchmarks for eye tests, foot exams, and HgbA1c tests. Based on the analysis provided in the previous section of the paper, one can deduce that Mercy Center underperforms on these metrics, considering the foot exams, eye tests, and HgbA1c tests performed are below the required number. This underperformance significantly affects the provision of quality care to diabetic patients, especially since screening helps with the early identification of diabetes complications (Mothojakan et al., 2017).

Due to this, patients’ outcomes and quality of life will improve. At the same time, their health care expenses will decline since they will not have to cover supplementary healthcare costs due to diabetes complications (Mothojakan et al., 2017). In Mercy Center’s case, failure to undertake the requisite screening for diabetic patients increases the likelihood of diabetic patients suffering from complications associated with this ailment. Patients with diabetes have a heightened risk of developing foot-related health problems such as neuropathy (Mothojakan et al., 2017). Foot exams are needed to check for such complications. Besides this, eye exams are also needed to reduce the risk of diabetics suffering from diabetic retinopathy (Mothojakan et al., 2017). Furthermore, regular hemoglobin A1c tests are needed to help people with diabetes maintain their blood sugar levels within the required range.

Potential Repercussions of Failing to Make Changes

The level of competition in Minnesota’s health care industry is relatively high. Due to this, improved patient outcomes and experience can be a vital source of competitive advantage for Mercy Center, especially when it comes to the care of diabetics. At Mercy Center, eye exams, foot exams, and HgbA1c tests were below the state benchmarks. This will inadvertently lead to patient dissatisfaction since it heightens the occurrence of diabetes-related complications (Mothojakan et al., 2017). The impact of this will be Mercy Center’s patients seeking care from other hospitals. This is because the lack of sufficient screening for diabetics at Mercy Center increases the chances of them developing diabetes-related complications, resulting in poor health outcomes, low quality of life, and increased healthcare expenses. Avoidable complications and increased unnecessary emergency visits are key cost areas that would impact the market share (Mothojakan et al., 2017). These phenomena will push diabetics to seek care from Mercy Center’s competitors, leading to decreased revenues for Mercy Center.

Healthcare affordability is vital, in part due to the rising immigrant population in Mercy Center’s target market. According to Dias et al. (2020), Asian, African American, and Latinx immigrants have a heightened risk for diabetes. This phenomenon means that a rise in the population of immigrants in Minnesota will increase the number of diabetic patients needing care from Mercy Medical (Dias et al., 2020). Caring for these patients will increase the hospital’s revenue. Even though the hospital’s new patients are predominantly white, expansions to the minority-dominated areas depend on addressing cost concerns for all the domains. Tan et al. (2019) explains the disparities in the outcomes of patients admitted for diabetic foot infections. The risks of amputations are highest for African Americans and Hispanics than for Caucasian white (Tan et al., 2019). Since immigrants have a heightened risk for diabetes-related conditions, failure to make changes will make it harder for Mercy Center to target these patients. This is because the emergence of these complications will reduce their quality of life and increase their healthcare expenses. Furthermore, most of them are low-income immigrants and thus, cannot afford these high costs.

Ethical, Evidence-Based Practice Guidelines to improve Targeted Benchmark Performance

Potential Strategy and How It Will Improve Performance

One of the ethical, evidence-based strategies Mercy Medical Center should adopt to address the identified underperformance revolves around encouraging physician-nurse collaboration in the care of diabetics. According to Schweizer et al. (2017), a collaboration between physicians and nurses can significantly enhance the care of patients with chronic conditions such as diabetes. When nurses and physicians at the hospital work together to regularly screen diabetic patients, their outcomes and quality of life will be better, while their healthcare expenses will decline (Schweizer et al., 2017). This is because screening that complies with state benchmarks will facilitate the early identification and treatment of diabetes-related complications. Furthermore, patient safety and satisfaction levels at Mercy Medical Center will improve when this happens.

 

 

Application of the Strategy to My Practice Setting

The proposed strategy entails adopting inter-professional collaboration for the care of diabetics. For this strategy to be successfully implemented in my practice setting, nurses and physicians will collaborate to undertake early and comprehensive screening for diabetic patients (Mothojakan et al., 2017). Nurses at my practice setting will be responsible for conducting requisite foot exams, eye exams, and HgbA1c stat tests (Mothojakan et al., 2017). Furthermore, the patients’ primary physicians will be tasked with interpreting the HgbA1c test results, explaining them to the patient, and advising them on the steps, they need to take to ensure their blood sugar levels remain within the required range (Mothojakan et al., 2017).

Ensuring The Strategy Is Ethical and Culturally Inclusive in Its Application

Mercy Medical Center serves a diverse pool of diabetic patients. Ensuring that the proposed strategy is ethical and culturally inclusive when being implemented is vital. The most effective way to ensure this happens is to require nurses and physicians caring for people with diabetes to improve their cultural competency (Jager et al., 2020). Specifically, understanding patients’ cultural practices and beliefs and how they affect their health care decision-making will make it easier for nurses to encourage Latinx and African American patients to show up for screening (Jager et al., 2020). For the physicians, improved cultural competence will allow them to make culturally sensitive recommendations to patients to help them maintain their blood sugar levels within the required range (Jager et al., 2020).

Potential Effects of Environmental Factors

Regulatory Considerations

The American Diabetes Association’s (ADA) Standards of Medical Care in Diabetes outlines clinical practice recommendations and provides the components of diabetes care, treatment goals and guidelines, and tools to assess the quality of care accorded to diabetics (ADA Professional Practice Committee, 2022). One of the requirements under these clinical practice recommendations is that when diabetic retinopathy is discovered during screening, the patients should be promptly referred to an ophthalmologist (ADA Professional Practice Committee, 2022). This recommendation was missing from my proposal. To address this gap, once a nurse notices a patient has this complication, they should inform the patient’s primary care physician, who should then share the information with the patient and book an appointment for them with an ophthalmologist. Due to this, inter-professional collaboration in the care of diabetic patients will include not only nurses and primary care physicians but also ophthalmologists.

Resources

Low staffing levels at Mercy Medical Center might prevent the implementation of this proposal. For inter-professional collaboration to occur in the care of diabetic patients, the hospital needs to have enough nurses to conduct the required eye exams, foot exams, and HgbA1c tests. In addition, since hiring nurses will be a costly venture for Mercy Medical Center, this might prevent the hospital from implementing the proposed changes.

Conclusion: Stakeholder Participation

All pertinent stakeholders at Mercy Medical Center should participate in further developing and implementing the proposed recommendation. Ensuring this happens is vital; considering doing so will help reduce resistance to implementing the required changes. When all stakeholders participate in developing the recommendation further, they will feel part of the change process. Furthermore, doing this will allow them to share their opinions and suggestions related to the proposed changes. Due to this, the recommendation will not only be better, but also the affected stakeholders will not oppose its adoption and implementation.