Developing Organizational Policies and Practices Essay.

Identify and describe at least two competing needs impacting the Cures Act and information blocking
Describe a relevant policy or practice in your organization that may influence your selected healthcare issue/stressor.
Critique the policy for ethical considerations, and explain the policy’s strengths and challenges in promoting ethics and the sharing of notes and labs(the impact to delivery summary information that has maternal information, also drug screenings, behavioral health consults and medications that include antipsychotics and antivirals.
Recommend one or more policy or practice changes designed to balance the competing needs of resources, workers, and patients, while addressing any ethical shortcomings of the existing policies. Be specific and provide examples.Developing Organizational Policies and Practices Essay.

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Cite evidence that informs the healthcare issue/stressor and/or the policies, and provide two scholarly resources in support of your policy or practice recommendations
See attached file – connecting it with this paper

Analysis of a Pertinent Healthcare Issue

Several national healthcare issues impact the healthcare system and healthcare organizations in the US. These issues should be addressed to improve healthcare standards; however, some issues are more urgent than others. Transformational healthcare leaders are challenged to stay abreast with the ever-evolving multifaceted culture and climate of the healthcare system to address emerging healthcare issues (Broome & Marshall, 2021, p. 36). The selected healthcare issue is the Cures Act, also known as the 21st Century Act. Cures Act is a regulation that aims to accelerate the access of medication and medical devices and ensure patients have complete transparency and information regarding their healthcare costs and their healthcare outcomes (Martin, 2020). Developing Organizational Policies and Practices Essay.

National Healthcare Issue

The 21st Century Cures Act was enacted in December of 2016 and is a regulation that aimed to accelerate innovation and promote health information technology for patients, clinicians, and healthcare organizations (Lye et al., 2018). The Cures Act addresses the complex area of health information technology, especially electronic health records (EHRs), and the critical issue of interoperability. The Act also prohibits information-blocking practices and thus increases information transparency for patients. Through the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the health information is made more computable. This gives patients more control of their health records, thus increasing patient engagement and empowerment in their care. Consisting of three elements price transparency, information blocking, sharing of admission, discharge, and transfer (ADT) to providers and other healthcare organizations, the Cures Act ensures improved interoperability of EHRs (DesRoches et al., 2020).Developing Organizational Policies and Practices Essay.

The Impact of the Cures Act on the Healthcare Organization

Organizations have begun making changes to comply with the Cures Act. Hence, as a healthcare practitioner and nurse informaticist, I have been proactive in supporting and implementing changes to adhere to the regulation. Organizations are required to ensure the immediate release of patients’ results and ensure that healthcare providers’ notes are shared with patients as per the Massachusetts State Law.Developing Organizational Policies and Practices Essay.

In order to eliminate information blocking, interprofessional members from the information technology department, legal, compliance, and clinical informatics worked together to ensure that the patient information is documented in the patient portal, where patients can easily access the information. Therefore, the Cures Act has improved access to patient information and eliminated information blocking in my organization.Developing Organizational Policies and Practices Essay.

Moreover, to adhere to the price transparency as per the Act, a payment estimator application was added to the organization’s electronic system. The estimator includes procedural costs and the charges of various medications and medical supplies. Adhering with price transparency aims to reduce healthcare costs and allows patients to seek out health care of the best value. Also, the Cures Act addresses admission, discharge, and transfer information sharing. As a result, healthcare organizations are required to notify post-acute care services providers or pre-identified primary care providers or healthcare groups after a patient registers in the emergency department, admitted, discharged, or transferred from the hospital (Barlas, 2018). My organization has adopted an interprofessional team approach to leverage the electronic health record system to create notifications to the appropriate professionals and facilitate information sharing (ADT).Developing Organizational Policies and Practices Essay.

Summary of the Articles

Increased interoperability will create a larger technology footprint and incorporation of additional software and implementations. However, as healthcare organizations introduce other vendors and third-party software, there are always growing concerns about security breaches. Easing the access of patient information across systems and platforms for the patient, provider, and other healthcare organizations has its pros and cons.Developing Organizational Policies and Practices Essay.

The 21st Century Cures Act incorporation of price transparency is challenging and requires innovation. According to Helton (2019), recognition of healthcare disconnects between price structure and payment structure will be problematic as organizations move forward to attain price transparency. Innovation should not hinder the workflow or place a burden on resources. The development of a price calculator draws attention to the need to change pricing structures and the utilization of a tracking resource. This article supports the importance of price transparency and accelerates access to price information by consumers.Developing Organizational Policies and Practices Essay.

In the article by Mangino&Danis (2020), patients have a right to access their information through the electronic health records system. This includes the use of patient online portals to promote information access and ensure information transparency as per the Cures Act. Mangino&Danis (2020) thus explain that health systems have implemented online patient portals to ensure that patients can easily access and view their health records. However, the article notes that there are various ethical issues involved with availing patient information in online patient portals, such as confidentiality and privacy. Hence, healthcare organizations should implement security measures to protect the privacy and confidentiality of patient information.

Strategies Used to Address the Organizational Impact of the 21st Century Cure

According to Helton (2019), one of the strategies healthcare organizations can use to create price transparency is innovation. Patients can easily access this information and make informed medical choices with the ability to price compare. A concern is the price transparency to the itemized bill the patient will receive aftercare is delivered. As an organization, we should ensure that what information we put forth for the consumer matches the itemized bill. Analysis of workflows and improvements to the utilization of our current tracking resource utility is needed to prevent discrepancies.Developing Organizational Policies and Practices Essay.

Additionally, we should aim to align our current charges and data within our patient accounting with the data that we plan to publish as an organization. By proactively addressing this concern, we as an organization can improve productivity and resources provided to patients. Furthermore, we can intercept any instances of pricing concerns from patients and eliminate the need to allocate resources to field the calls and questions.Developing Organizational Policies and Practices Essay.

Secondly, the organization needs to ensure that all patient information is documented electronically and integrates into the online patient portals to access their health information easily. Mangino&Danis (2020) explain that sharing patient information in online patient portals ensures information transparency per the Cures Act. For every instance that the organization does not conform with the regulation, a stiff fine is incurred. The penalty can total as much as one million dollars per violation. It is imperative as an organization that appropriate measures are taken to comply with the regulation. The recent $62 million construction project, the $33 million acquisition of the urgent care facilities, and the $124 million cost of the new electronic health record have weakened the organization’s financial performance(Bartlett, 2019). If citations occur due to non-compliance with the regulation, the organization could be further debilitated. By sharing patient information, the organization should also ensure that the privacy of such information is protected. The healthcare organization must implement the appropriate security measures to ensure only authorized parties can access the information. Incorporating a dual-layer authentication for encryption is vital to create an additional security layer to the PHI to ensure no data breach. Although the dual encryption would add an extra log-in step for patients, providers, and other institutions, the organization and patients can take comfort in knowing their patient health information is secure.Developing Organizational Policies and Practices Essay.

Conclusion

The 21st Century Act (Cures Act) facilitates complete transparency regarding the costs of medications, care, and care outcomes for the patients. Adhering to this regulation ensures that patients have more control of their health information and empowers them to be more engaged in their care. Moreover, through this Act, patients are provided with up-to-date information regarding their health, empowering them to make informed treatment decisions.

Transformational leaders in healthcare must develop solutions for the rapidly evolving healthcare and regulations changes to strategically align with the overall goal of the Quadruple Aim (Laureate Education, 2018). As a transformational leader, it is critical to champion change and engage clinicians and organizations to ensure workflows are followed for compliance and regulatory standards and guarantee safe, high-quality, cost-effective care for patients with improved outcomes.Developing Organizational Policies and Practices Essay.

Developing Organizational Policies and Practices

Healthcare organization is a system that brings people, institutions, and resources that deliver healthcare services together to meet the needs of the target population. Except for government healthcare institutions, other healthcare organizations operate as business entities that need to be handled with care to remain profitable. In these organizations, patients get the best healthcare services. Healthcare providers need to get good and sustainable pay as they advance their professional development (Singh, & Singh, 2019). At the same time, the organization needs to make a profit and incorporate recent healthcare techniques. This makes the organizations to have a competing interest amongst each other. The paper describes the competitions, interests, and policies in the healthcare organization about up-skilling.Developing Organizational Policies and Practices Essay.

Two Competing Needs that Impact Up-skilling in My Organization

Upskilling is the process of keeping up with the latest technology. It is the most challenging advancement in many companies. It creates powerful business opportunities and skills gaps, especially in the healthcare sector. This up-skilling needs highly efficient personnel to run the technology and to keep the company competitive. Up-skilling improves the retention of healthcare workers, boosts the morale of working, enables client satisfaction, and attracts new talent(Singh, & Singh, 2019). Two competing healthcare needs need up-skilling. This is maintaining quality healthcare to meet the needs of the community and operating with a cost-effective and affordable budget to accommodate the latest medical advancements.Developing Organizational Policies and Practices Essay.

Patients are the primary stakeholders in the healthcare organization that demand the latest, quality, and affordable healthcare services. These services are offered by highly efficient doctors, nurses, laboratory technologists, pharmacists, therapists, and other healthcare providers.For example, with the increase in the population suffering chronic illnesses like cancer, diabetes, hypertension, and heart diseases, the patient requires a highly efficient healthcare provider or doctors with a specialty in the different sectors to prevent long-term disabilities and improve the quality of life.Developing Organizational Policies and Practices Essay.

The second competing need that improves upskilling is operating within a tight budget to incorporate the latest medical advancement. As a private healthcare institution, it needs to make a profit, pay the workers in good time, and at the same time train their staff about the new technology. Therefore,the organization needs to cut down all their miscellaneous expenses to retain the workers and have technological advancement.Developing Organizational Policies and Practices Essay.

A Relevant Policy in My Organization Influencing Up-skilling

For the organization to remain proactive and competitive, the care providers need to upskill to meet the demands in the competitive market. The organization needs some funds aside to offer the upskilling scholarship to the most proactive care provider. The criteria can be the person who has worked for the company for over five years and is willing to learn. The organization needs to accommodate different styles of learning. It can be the traditional classroom style or micro-learning (Brown, & Andrews, 2020). The organization needs to empower the employees to choose their path of career advancement to take ownership of their career development. The organization should also reward their employees for upskilling. In my organization, with the new advancement of the EHR, a general nurse up skilled to an informaticist. Other nurses were trained as renal and ICU specialists. This has improved the phase of the company’s development as well as keeping it competitive to realize the patient’s satisfaction.Developing Organizational Policies and Practices Essay.

Policy Critique

A policy is a principle of action proposed by the organization. In this organization’s policy, both the employee and the organization will benefit. The employee will have the advantage of career advancement that will make him or her competitive to the needs of society. The organization will benefit from having competitive services and a workforce attracting clients that enables them to make more profit. The policy of training staff who have worked for over five years makes the newly employed staff delay upgrading their skills as they wait for the scholarship after the five years of practice. In the ethical principles, there is no justice for these employees(Amann, et al, 2020). At the same time, it would not be fair for the company to leave the new employees to pay for their upskilling. This leaves the company in a dilemma of making new policies that will allow the willing employees to up-grade their careers. This policy needs to motivate the employees in career development with no bias whatsoever.Developing Organizational Policies and Practices Essay.

The greatest beneficiary is the patient and the healthcare provider. The patient gets the best care with the newly acquired skills that improve the health outcome. The employee gains new skills and knowledge without their own expense. This creates the morale of the employee and achieves patient satisfactionthat gives the organization higher ratings and reviews. The organization reduces the expense of advertisement and recruitment of the new staff. The organization attracts new clients who need the new services provided.Developing Organizational Policies and Practices Essay.

The challenge associated with the policy is funding. As a private institution, it needs to make a profit to keep it proactive, maintain its employees as well as offer scholarships to its most proactive employee. The policy of offering scholarships may be an issue for the organization due to the scarcity of the resources available. The organization may stretch financially to put the employee on school. This makes other potential beneficiaries miss the opportunity for upgrading. The dilemma of making profits or giving scholarships to the employees is solved by the organizational committee considering the external competitions.Developing Organizational Policies and Practices Essay.

The recommended policy for balancing competing needs for resources, patients, and workforce

 Training

An organization needs to send its employees to upgrade their skills to fit in the competitive market. After the employee leaves for school, the gap left must be replaced by new staff that makes the organization incur an additional cost. Training done within the working premises reduces the extra cost incurred by the organization and enables the employee to continue working when they are out of class (Lyons, 2020). This policy may be implemented to help the organization to train more employees at the same time. The company benefits by getting new skills and reducing the expenses of hiring new staff. It motivated the employees in their career growth because everyone has equal opportunities for training.Developing Organizational Policies and Practices Essay.

Partnerships with Foundations and Philanthropists

Mangold, (2020) A philanthropic partnership is a resource to those who want to achieve more in giving partnerships, giving opportunities, for example, co-funding, collaboration, and networks for individuals. The philanthropist partnership in an organization helps in the provision of scholarship to the best performing employee hence relieving the pressure of the costs and resources of the organization. For example, in a period of 5 years, the bill and Melinda foundation gave over 70% of health-related funding.Developing Organizational Policies and Practices Essay.

Ethical Principles

The ethical principles in this policy are beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice. However, the ethical shortcoming in this is the lack of payment during the study period. This does not observe the principle of non-maleficence because it causes stress and pressure to the employee despite upgrading of the skills (Amann, et al, 2020). The health organizational development of policies and practices helps to meet the needs of the patient as well as improve the skills of the healthcare practitioners.Developing Organizational Policies and Practices Essay.

Cures Act and information blocking

A Healthcare organization is a system that brings institutions, resources, andpeople that offer healthcare services together to satisfy the needs of the community. Communication is exchanging information from one person to another through a communication channel with expectations of getting feedback. A healthcare organization needs to have a communication channel to enable the delivery of quality health services. A good communication channel stores patient’s previous medical histories and other patient’s personal details. This saves time and enables the care provider to monitor the progress of a sickness. The cures act was enacted in the 21^st century to advance interoperability, prohibit information blocking, and enhance usability, accessibility, privacy, and security of healthcare services (Gordon, & Mandl, 2020). Therefore, improving the flow and exchange of electronic health information.Developing Organizational Policies and Practices Essay.

Gordon, & Mandl, (2020) Information blocking is an act that prevents, discourages access, or interferes with the exchange or use of electronic health information. It has concerns about a patient’s health. It prevents access to patient’s data in good time that may hinder effective health service. Information blocking prevents the patient’s information from being used to research treatment or adjust healthcare service costs. Information blocking limits the patient from changing the healthcare provider hence limiting healthcare decisions making. Some factors contribute to limiting electronic health information. They are categorized into intentional and unintentional. The unintentional error that can limit access to information can be economical, technical, or practical. For example, in the practical situation when data is fed into the electronic health record by two different people, the information cannot be merged because the systems are not compatible. Intentional barriers to access to information are private interests, the need to protect the patient’s privacy, increase profit, and the desire to limit professional liability.Developing Organizational Policies and Practices Essay.

Competing Needs Impacting the Cures Act and Information Blocking

Information blocking interferes with the accessibility of patient’s information about health. In an organization, information blocking can be solved by the multidisciplinary collaboration that involves members from the information technology department, clinical informatics, legal, and compliance informatics. This team has ensured the safety of the patient’s information and easy accessibility of information about the organization (Clohessy, & Acton, 2019). The competing needs that impact the cures act and blocking information are maintain quality healthcare and maintaining a profitable organization.Developing Organizational Policies and Practices Essay.

The use of electronic health information devices is a technological advancement in the medical department. It has led to an improvement in health information technology. This system keeps records of the patient’s visits to the hospital and personal information in chronological order. It has improved healthcare services by reducing time wastage at the hospital reception (Clohessy, & Acton, 2019). It has made treatment easier for the care providers by providing past medical history. This system has led to increased patient visits in the healthcare facility. Therefore, information blocking will compromise healthcare services and will increase the waiting time at the reception.Developing Organizational Policies and Practices Essay.

Maintaining a profitable healthcare organization when using electronic health information happens by adhering to the price transparency act. A payment estimator is installed in the electronic system. It estimates the costs and charges of the medicine and other services in the organization. It also keeps records of patients’ expenses from admission to discharge. It ensures the patient gets healthcare services at the best value.Developing Organizational Policies and Practices Essay.

A relevant Policy in my organization Influencing Cures Act and Information Blocking

Communication in an organization determines its productivity. The information system has a positive or negative impact on the patient and the healthcare provider. The policy or the strategy to reduce information blocking is making electronic health information available to the authorized people with a permitted purpose according to the law.Making patients information easily accessible improves healthcare delivery in terms of; the patient can make their personal health decision, the care provider can monitor the progress of the disease or the improvements in an illness, and there is reduced waiting time at the reception (Bincoletto, G. 2019). The authorized people in this scenario are the healthcare providers, the administrative staff, and the accounting department. Each one of them will have a personal identification that allows them to view patients’ information related to their respective job descriptions. For example, the triaging nurse will only be able to view the vital signs of the patients. This policy will improve patient’s healthcare services and protect their personal data.Developing Organizational Policies and Practices Essay.

Policy Critique and Ethical Considerations

A policy is a principle of action proposed by the organization. In this organization’s policy, the employee, the patient, and the organization will benefit. Availability of electronic healthcare information to the authorized people and with permitted purpose according to the law maintains the integrity of the organization. It makes everyone accountable for the information stored in the system.

The policy benefits the healthcare provider by facilitating easy access to the patient’s previous medical information. It helps the care provider monitor the disease progress. The patients benefit by getting the best affordable services, patients were satisfied with the services, and they spent less time at the hospital(Bincoletto, G. 2019). The organization benefits by reducing the cost incurred in paperwork and it can maximize the profit through many walk-ins clients.Developing Organizational Policies and Practices Essay.

The challenge associated with this policy is the implementation of policy. The implementation process involves a multidisciplinary team that consumes a lot of time making the decision.  The process is costly to the organization because a new technician needs to be hired to control the system and to train other staff members on how to use it(Bincoletto, G. 2019). Installing the devices is expensive hence making the organization spend more money. Violation of the law as guided by the cure Act enables easy accessibility of patient information.Developing Organizational Policies and Practices Essay.

Ethical principles are a set of values and norms that influence conduct. In this case, the principles violated by information blocking are the principle of patient confidentiality and informed consent (Stoeger, &Schmidhuber, 2020). Allowing only authorized personnel to patient’s information restricts the patient to make an informed decision and exposed their personal information.

Recommendation

To reduce the incidences of information blocking, the organization should set the electronic health information in a way that only the doctor can view personal information. These devices should have a password to ensure patient’s safety.

Conclusion

Information blocking reduced the accessibility of patient’s data causing poor healthcare services. The Cure Act helped in the uplifting of information blocking. Therefore, there was an improvement in terms of the quality and efficacy of healthcare services.Developing Organizational Policies and Practices Essay.

References

Bincoletto, G. (2019, June). Data protection by design model for privacy management in electronic health records. In Annual Privacy Forum (pp. 161-181). Springer, Cham.

Clohessy, & Acton, (2019). Investigating the influence of organizational factors on blockchain adoption. Industrial Management & Data Systems.

Gordon, & Mandl, (2020) The 21st Century Cures Act: A Competitive Apps Market and the Risk of Innovation Blocking. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 22(12), e24824.

Stoeger,  & Schmidhuber, (2020). The use of data from electronic health records in times of a pandemic—a legal and ethical assessment. Journal of Law and the Biosciences, 7(1), lsaa041.Developing Organizational Policies and Practices Essay.

References

Amann, J., Blasimme, A., Vayena, E., Frey, D., & Madai, V. I. (2020). Explainability for artificial intelligence in healthcare: a multidisciplinary perspective. BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making, 20(1), 1-9.

Brown, & Andrews, (2020) Supporting ‘successful knowledge transfer’for early childhood professionals–An emerging conceptual framework in an Australian context. Early Years, 1-16.

Lyons, (2020). The impact of job training on temporary worker performance: Field experimental evidence from insurance sales agents. Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, 29(1), 122-146.

Mangold, (2020). Philanthropic Foundations in Higher Education. Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden.

Singh, & Singh,  (2019). Interplay of organizational justice, psychological empowerment, organizational citizenship behavior, and job satisfaction in the context of circular economy. Management Decision.

Developing Organizational Policies and Practices Essay.