Top areas that hospitals are working to improve

Access to care, the quality of care, and the cost of care are the top areas that hospitals are working to improve. The cost of health care and financing health care results in a national health care expenditure and sources of payment must be investigated. Health care costs are also inextricably bound to quality issues and, therefore, quality initiatives are linked to health care spending.

National Health Expenditures (NHE) and trends are reported annually by the National Center for Health Statistics of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Office of the Actuary, the National Health Statistics Group, the U. S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). The expenditures are reported and tracked over time using a standard format that identifies both the private and public sources of funds as well as the objects of expense. Reports are issued annually, two years following the closure of the reporting period. See Table 8-1 in the textbook.

In 2014, NHE totaled more than 3.0 trillion dollars, 17.5 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and that equates to approximately 9,523 dollars per person (see Figure 8-1). There are a number of interrelated factors that contribute to health care expenditures. These include aging population; new drugs and medical and diagnostic technology; emphasis on speciality medicine; large numbers of uninsured and underinsured; volume-based reimbursement incentives; and labor intensity.

Scenario
As the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of We Care Hospital, you receive a call from the Chief Financial Officer (CFO), who requests that the two of you work together on a health care spending project. Your first task is to conduct a PESTLE analysis. Use Critical Thinking Skills and Metacognition to research current events in the macro environment. Then, prepare a Microsoft PowerPoint 10-slide narrative using a PESTLE analysis. A PESTLE Analysisidentifies political, economic, social, technological, legal, and environmental factors. Top areas that hospitals are working to improve

Instructions
Your 10-slide PESTLE PowerPoint should follow this format:

Slide 1: Cover Page.

Include the title of your presentation, your name, the course number and course title, your professor’s name, and the date.

Slide 2: Background or Executive Summary.

Describe the details of the situation. Use bullets with short sentences. The title of these slides should be Executive Summary.

Slide 3: Thesis Statement.

Identify the focus of your research. The title of this slide should be Thesis Statement.

Slides 4–9: Support.

Support your thesis statement following the SESC formula: State, Explain, Support, and Conclude.

You should include at least three court cases and related peer-reviewed articles from within the past five years.

Slide 10: References.

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.