Introduction, click to open sectionAssignment 1: Framework for Affiliation

Assignment 1 is intended to assist you in identifying the justification, goals, and strategies for Overlake to affiliate with other organizations. Assignment 1 will focus on the goals and motivations for affiliation.

Assignment 1 will prepare you for the assessment, the affiliation recommendation, by evaluating relevant aspects of Overlake, including the following:

• community goals
• strategic plans
• clinical services, quality, and outcomes
• clinical and staff commitments and support
• facilities and technical support

It will also help you write the goal and rationale for affiliation needed in Task 1.

Follow these three steps to help you complete this assignment:

Discover: Evaluate the motivations and goals for healthcare organizations seeking affiliation, both in the past and today, and how affiliations meet the needs of the populations served by each potential partnering organization.

Engage: Take a closer look at Overlake and examine which areas have growth potential that might benefit from an affiliation.

Review: Apply what you have learned in the previous steps to complete the (Assignment 1).

Essential Materials

Use the following resources to complete Assignment 1.

Framework for Affiliation Analysis worksheet (Assignment 1). This worksheet uses guided questions to help you evaluate Overlakes needs and goals for affiliation. The worksheet will be submitted with Assignments 2 and 3-4 (Task 1).

Overlake Medical Center & Clinics and MultiCare Health System Finalize Affiliation

Overlake and MultiCare sign affiliation agreement

Partnerships, Mergers, and Acquisitions Can Provide Benefits to Certain Hospitals and Communities | AHA

EMS USA Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act – StatPearls – NCBI Bookshelf (nih.gov)

The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA): what it is and what it means for physicians

Competencies

3042.2.3 : Human Capital Management

The learner manages internal and external human relationships in healthcare organizations using management theories, methods, and techniques.

3042.2.5 : Leading Change

The learner proposes solutions that use strategies and processes to lead effective healthcare organizational change.

3043.2.2 : Enterprise Risk Management

The learner assesses operational, ethical, governance, regulatory, legal, and financial factors in healthcare that manage, mitigate, exacerbate, and shift risk.

3043.2.4 : Innovative Solutions

The learner develops innovative solutions that use various models to address future challenges and emerging opportunities in the healthcare industry.

Introduction

This assessment is intended to provide you with a greater depth of understanding of the potential ways healthcare organizations become affiliated systems. Your solution to the challenge presented in this task will ultimately leverage different interdependencies of the healthcare system (providers, payers, patients, and policies) to achieve the goals of your organization and address stakeholder needs.

The information and analyses from the course assignments and learnings from the coursework will be used to complete an affiliation recommendation. In addition to completing your recommendation in this task, you will also create a multimedia presentation for the advisory board of Overlake Medical Center in Task 2.

Note: Each of the course assignments should be completed in full before attempting this task. To ensure a successful outcome, please work with your course instructors to complete the assignments.

Scenario

You are an administrator at Overlake Medical Center. Overlake Medical Center has been considering affiliating with another organization, and you have been asked to explore a potential affiliation agreement with either Multi-Care or the organization you chose to evaluate in assignment 3. In your exploration, you will evaluate the needs, goals, and strategies of Overlake and each of the potential affiliate organizations before making a recommendation and plan for affiliation.

Requirements

Your submission must represent your original work and understanding of the course material. Most performance assessment submissions are automatically scanned through the WGU similarity checker. Students are strongly encouraged to wait for the similarity report to generate after uploading their work and then review it to ensure Academic Authenticity guidelines are met before submitting the file for evaluation. See for more information.

Grammarly Note:

Professional Communication will be automatically assessed through Grammarly for Education in most performance assessments before a student submits work for evaluation. Students are strongly encouraged to review the Grammarly for Education feedback prior to submitting work for evaluation, as the overall submission will not pass without this aspect passing. See for more information.

Microsoft Files Note:

Write your paper in Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx) unless another Microsoft product, or pdf, is specified in the task directions. Tasks may not be submitted as cloud links, such as links to Google Docs, Google Slides, OneDrive, etc. All supporting documentation, such as screenshots and proof of experience, should be collected in a pdf file and submitted separately from the main file. For more information, please see

You must use the rubric to direct the creation of your submission because it provides detailed criteria that will be used to evaluate your work. Each requirement below may be evaluated by more than one rubric aspect. The rubric aspect titles may contain hyperlinks to relevant portions of the course.

Develop an affiliation recommendation (suggested length of 710 pages), which will be submitted to Overlake Medical Centers advisory board for approval, by doing the following:

A. Discuss the goals and rationale for an affiliation by doing the following:

1. Explain two key goals for the affiliation and specific criteria a candidate affiliate must meet.

2. Identify three specific advantages a well-aligned affiliation would provide for Overlake.

3. Analyze Overlakes current state and Overlakes anticipated projected market segmentation based on the proposed affiliation. Your analysis must be supported by demographic data and include the following elements:

Overlakes current state, including anticipated market segmentation

location-specific demographics

how the populations health needs align with the proposed affiliation

B. Discuss the affiliate recommendation by doing the following:

1. Recommend an affiliate based on your goals and rationale from part A and include key attributes of the proposed organization that support the affiliation.

2. Identify two major benefits of affiliation with this organization and describe how these benefits strategically align with Overlakes goals.

3. Discuss two specific reasons to avoid affiliation with each of the other potential candidates. Support your reasons with sources.

C. Discuss the affiliation plan for the proposed affiliation structure by doing the following:

1. Describe your proposed affiliation structure and include justification for the selection.

2. Create new vision, mission, and value statements for the new proposed affiliation structure of the organization you selected in part B1.

3. Develop a leadership plan for the proposed affiliation structure that includes the following elements:

strategies for overall organization management

strategies for the collaborative decision-making process

evidence-based principles, strategies, and tools of effective change management

4. Describe how to maintain and improve employee satisfaction, engagement, and retention in a culture of positive change.

5. Describe two opportunities and two challenges for the affiliation.

6. Discuss the impact both Overlakes and the affiliate organizations cultures could have on the future of the proposed affiliation.

7. Discuss two reasons for termination of the affiliation agreement.

8. Provide a potential exit strategy that is actionable and includes three action steps.

9. Discuss two future challenges and two opportunities that could result from the affiliation in regard to the evolving community healthcare landscape.

D. Acknowledge sources, using in-text citations and references, for content that is quoted, paraphrased, or summarized.

E. Demonstrate professional communication in the content and presentation of your submission.

File Restrictions

File name may contain only letters, numbers, spaces, and these symbols: ! – _ . * ‘ ( )

File size limit: 200 MB

File types allowed: doc, docx, rtf, xls, xlsx, ppt, pptx, odt, pdf, csv, txt, qt, mov, mpg, avi, mp3, wav, mp4, wma, flv, asf, mpeg, wmv, m4v, svg, tif, tiff, jpeg, jpg, gif, png, zip, rar, tar, 7z Assignment 2: Determining Organizational Culture

In Assignment 1, you identified the strategic goals and motivations for affiliation. The next step is to examine an organization’s mission, vision, and value statements for cultural and operational alignment with potential affiliates. Any affiliation will impact the organizations culture, structure, and human resources (HR). A strong affiliation recommendation will account for these considerations, preemptively preventing cultural clashes that may drive an otherwise promising affiliation to failure.

Assignment 2 will prepare you for the assessment by evaluating relevant aspects of Overlake, including the following:

• mission, vision, and values
• culture
• human resources
• goals for affiliation
• alignment of those goals with the current organizational culture

It will also help you with two parts of the assessment:

1. Goal and rationale for affiliation
2. Affiliation recommendation

Follow these three steps to help you complete this assignment:

Discover: Learn how an organizational culture should guide affiliation decisions and how to motivate employees and physicians during an organizational change.

Engage: Practice the principles discussed in the Discover section to identify the most pressing cultural and HR issues for Overlake’s affiliation.

Review: Apply what you have learned in the previous steps to complete the (Assignment 2).

Essential Materials

Use the following resources to complete Assignment 2.

CONSOLIDATION CASUALTIES: Hospital mergers unwind as organizations clash.

Sanford Health, UnityPoint call off $11 billion merger.

Discover, click to open section

Engage, click to open section

Review, click to open section

References

Hesston L. Johnson. (2020). Behind the Scenes of Health Care: Motivation and Commitment of Health Care Employees. Business Expert Pres. https://wgu.percipio.com/books/438769ad-20ec-43ec-bd56-808c2e5f4b34#epubcfi(/6/4!/4/2%5Bepubmain%5D/2%5Bg7b880faa-5114-4049-b10c-e33c53c199c8%5D/2/2/1:0)

Kacik, A. (2021). Consolidation Casualties: Hospital mergers unwind as organizations clash. Modern Healthcare, 51(18), 30.

Kacik, A. (2019). Sanford Health, UnityPoint call off $11 billion merger. Modern Healthcare, 49(45), 10. Assignment 3: Evaluating Potential Affiliates

Once the framework for affiliation is established, and the mission, vision, values, and goals are identified within an organization, the organization initiates vetting potential organization candidates who can create a best fit. As explored in Assignments 1 and 2, no affiliate will be a perfect match for the organization, so it is crucial to recognize the strengths and limitations of the current organization. Assignment 3 will explore aspects of organizations to evaluate when deciding to affiliate. Your task is to research and evaluate the merits of two potential organizations for affiliation: multi-care and an organization of your choice. Then you will select the best organization for affiliation. Once the organization has been selected, your next challenge is to assess the potential impact the selected organization will have on Overlake using Millers impact assessment framework (IAF). Selecting an organization is a critical step in developing the affiliation recommendation.

Assignment 3 will prepare you for the assessment by evaluating the following:

• the relative merits of the two organizations put forward as potential affiliation candidates
• the best organization for affiliation based on its compatibility with Overlake’s goals and culture (as evaluated in Assignments 1 and 2)
• the potential impact on Overlake of affiliating with the selected organization

It will also help you write an affiliation recommendation for the assessment.

Follow these three steps to help you complete this assignment:

Discover: Explore the factors an organization should consider when comparing possible affiliate candidates, including the strategic, operational, and cultural aspects of each candidate.

Engage: Begin researching the two potential candidates, multi-Care and an organization of your choice, making similar considerations you had for Overlake, and consider the impact of affiliating with your selected organization.

Review: Apply what you have learned to complete the . Use these guided questions to help you evaluate affiliation considerations for the two affiliation candidates. The impact assessment helps you determine which impact dimensions will be most relevant for your chosen affiliation candidate.

Essential Materials

Use the following resources to complete Assignment 3.

“Impact Assessment Framework.”

“Administration of Strategic Agreements in Public Hospitals: Considerations to Enhance the Quality and Sustainability of Mergers and Acquisitions.”

“Reports and Executive Summaries” from Management Communication.

Discover, click to open section

Engage, click to open section

Review, click to open section

References

American Hospital Association. (2021, October). Partnerships, Mergers, and Acquisitions Can Provide Benefits to Certain Hospitals and Communities. https://www.aha.org/standardsguidelines/2021-10-08-partnerships-mergers-and-acquisitions-can-provide-benefits-certain

Western Governors University. (n.d.) Impact Assessment Framework. https://web5.wgu.edu/aap/content/d511%20impact%20assessment%20framework.pdf

The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. (n.d.). Impact Assessment framework. Retrieved from https://web5.wgu.edu/aap/content/d511%20impact%20assessment%20framework.pdf

Management Communication. (n.d.) Reports and executive summaries. Retrieved from https://open.byu.edu/mcom320/reports

MCOM 320: Public Relations Writing. (n.d.). Reports. Retrieved from https://open.byu.edu/mcom320/reports