Develop a 4 page business case for the initiative you proposed in Assessment 1. Examine feasibility and cost-benefit considerations over a 5-year period, analyze ways to mitigate risks, and complete a cost-benefit analysis.
Introduction
Note: Each assessment in this course builds upon the work you have completed in previous assessments. Therefore, you must complete the assessments in the order in which they are presented.
As a master’s-level health care practitioner, you are expected to consider a number of factors when analyzing the feasibility of a new initiative. For example, you must consider the various types of risk (such as patient safety, physical plant, financial, or reputation), as well as the present and future value of the service line or economic opportunity in which you are investing. You must also balance your ethical and moral responsibility to provide quality care to patients and populations with your responsibility to protect your organization’s assets and economic viability in the near and long terms.
Instructions
Develop a business case for the economic initiative you proposed in Assessment 1. Examine the feasibility and cost-benefit considerations of implementing your proposed initiative over the next five years. Analyze ways to mitigate risks and complete a cost-benefit analysis.
The requirements for your business case, 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 document format and length and for supporting evidence.
• Analyze the potential economic opportunities and risks associated with your proposed initiative.
o How do the potential opportunities benefit your organization or care setting?
o How could potential risks pose a threat to the financial security of your organization or care setting?
o How do the potential economic opportunities compare to the potential economic risks?
• Propose ethical and culturally sensitive solutions that address the risks associated with your initiative to the future economic security of your organization or care setting.
o Which risks are potentially the most significant for your organization or care setting?
How could you modify your proposed initiative to mitigate those risks?
How have other organizations and experts in the field dealt with similar risks?
o How do ethics and equality factor into your proposed solutions?
Are your solutions unfairly burdening or disadvantaging any specific groups?
o How will this proposal affect community health care delivery outcomes?
What makes this a great opportunity for economic growth?
What potential issues should be considered?
• Analyze the economic costs and benefits of your proposed initiative over a five-year period.
o Use the Cost-Benefit Analysis Template [XLSX] for your calculations. Add the worksheet to your business case as an appendix.
o Does your analysis warn against specific aspects of your proposed initiative?
o How would you recommend that your findings be incorporated into decisions about the feasibility of your proposed initiative?
• Propose ethical and culturally equitable ways of keeping costs under control, while maximizing the benefits of your initiative.
o What costs are you most likely to be able to control or reduce?
How would you go about ensuring this?
o How could controlling or reducing these costs affect the benefits of your proposed initiative?
What strategies could you employ to maintain or maximize these benefits, while controlling or reducing costs?
o How do you plan to ensure that any cost controls or benefit reductions are ethical and equitable?
• Justify the relevance and significance of the quantitative and qualitative economic, financial, and scholarly evidence you used to support your business case.
o This criterion applies to any evidence you cited throughout your business case. Your evidence should be persuasive and relevant to your findings, proposals, and recommendations. Consider one or more of the following questions when citing support evidence:
How is the evidence relevant to your organization or care setting?
How is the evidence relevant to your proposed economic initiative?
How does the evidence illustrate a solution that has been successful in the past?
How does the evidence illustrate that an initiative or solution is likely to be a net benefit to the organization or care setting?
• Write concisely and directly, using active voice.
o Proofread your document before you submit it to minimize errors that could distract readers and make it more difficult for them to focus on the substance of your business case.
• Apply current APA formatting to in-text citations and references.
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 2 Example [PDF].
Additional Requirements
Your assessment should also meet the following requirements:
• Format: Format your business case using APA current style. Use the APA Style Paper Tutorial [DOCX] to help you in writing and formatting your business case. Be sure to include:
o A title page and references page. An abstract is not required.
o A running head on all pages.
o Appropriate section headings.
• Length: Your business case should be 4 pages in length, not including the title page and references page.
• Supporting evidence: Cite 4–5 authoritative and scholarly resources to support your business case. Be sure that your sources include specific economic data.
Portfolio Prompt: You may choose to save your business case to your ePortfolio.
The following presentation from the CDC’s series on economic evaluation addresses methods to assess programmatic costs.
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (n.d.). Part IV: Benefit-cost analysis [PDF]. http://www.cdc.gov/dhdsp/programs/spha/economic_evaluation/docs/podcast_iv.pdf
The following blog post addresses how to effectively write an accurate and thorough cost-benefit analysis.
• Plowman, N. (2009). Cost benefit analysis example & free template download. Bright Hub PM. http://www.brighthubpm.com/projectplanning/58181-writing-a-cost-benefit-analysis/
The following presentation from the CDC’s series on economic evaluation addresses methods to assess programmatic costs.
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (n.d.). Part III: Programmatic cost analysis [PDF]. http://www.cdc.gov/dhdsp/programs/spha/economic_evaluation/docs/podcast_iii.pdf
The following presentation from the CDC’s series on economic evaluation addresses cost-effectiveness analysis.
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (n.d.). Part V: Cost-effectiveness analysis [PDF]. http://www.cdc.gov/dhdsp/programs/spha/economic_evaluation/docs/podcast_v.pdf
The following three articles illustrate examples of how to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of new service lines, therapies, or treatment initiatives in different settings.
• Leininger, B., Bronfort, G., Evans, R., Hodges, J., Kuntz, K., & Nyman, J. A. (2018). Cost-effectiveness of spinal manipulation, exercise, and self-management for spinal pain using an individual participant data meta-analysis approach: A study protocol. Chiropractic & Manual Therapies, 26(1), 1–8.
• Sanders, G. D., Maciejewski, M. L., & Basu, A. (2019). Overview of cost-effectiveness analysis. JAMA Guide to Statistics and Methods, 321(14), 1400–1401.
• Shearer, J., Papanikolaou, N., Meiser-Stedman, R., McKinnon, A., Dalgleish, T., Smith, P., Dixon, C., & Byford, S. (2018). Cost‐effectiveness of cognitive therapy as an early intervention for post‐traumatic stress disorder in children and adolescents: A trial based evaluation and model. Journal of Child Psychology & Psychiatry, 59(7), 773–780.
The following article provides a systematic review suggests that local and national public health interventions are highly cost-saving.
• Masters, R., Anwar, E., Collins, B., Cookson, R., & Capewell, S. (2017). Return on investment of public health interventions: A systematic review. Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health, 71(8), 827–834. http://jech.bmj.com/content/71/8/827
The following article addresses how economic evaluation helps to identify, measure, and compare activities with the necessary impact, scalability, and sustainability to optimize population health.
• Rabarison, K. M., Bish, C. L., Massoudi, M. S., & Giles, W. H. (2015). Economic evaluation enhances public health decision making. Frontiers in Public Health, 3, 164. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4478374/
The following article addresses the significance of the leadership role for problem solving relative to the economic decision-making process. Decision making is multifaceted and inclusive of the factors surrounding the change process, such as data collection, trial and error, and collaboration.
• Verboom, M. C., Gelderblom, H., Kerst, J. M., Steeghs, N., Reyners, A. K. L., Sleijfer, S., van der Graff, W. T. A., & van den Hout, W. B. (2019). Survival and cost-effectiveness of trabectedin compared to ifosfamide monotherapy in advanced soft tissue sarcoma patients. Sarcoma, 2019, 1–11.
The following article addresses the how and why behind the concept of spending efficiently in health care organizations. It provides an example of efficient spending and what outcomes can be realized.
• Weeks, J. (2018). Paradigm change in integrative care: Third-party payment and the cost-benefit . . . plus more. Integrative Medicine, 17(4), 24–27.
The following article provides a real-life example of comparing the costs of treatment strategies and reveals all the elements of what is most important to consider from a fiscal management perspective.
• Yuen, T., Carter, M. T., Szatmari, P., & Ungar, W. J. (2018). Cost-effectiveness of universal or high-risk screening compared to surveillance monitoring in autism spectrum disorder. Journal of Autism & Developmental Disorders, 48(9), 2968–2979.
