Monthly Archives: March 2023

As you explored in this week’s Discussion, assessment becomes more complex if a couple or family member shows signs of pervasive mental illness or a significant health concern. Using theory-based interventions may help you navigate this challenging terrain.

For this Assignment, consider a couple/family where one member has a severe and persistent mental illness. (Note: This may be a fictitious case or a case from your professional experience). Think about how you would conceptualize the couple’s/family’s problems using the lens of your chosen theoretical orientation. Using the Walden Library, locate two evidence-based journal articles that support interventions for the present issue.

The Assignment (2–3 pages)

• Identify the pervasive mental illness or health concern present in the couple/family.
• Conceptualize the couple’s/family’s problem through your chosen theoretical orientation.
• Design a treatment plan including short- and long-term goals.
• Explain two evidence-based interventions you would use to address the couple’s/family’s issues and how you would use them. (Note: The interventions may not emerge from your chosen theoretical orientation.)
• Justify the intervention you selected with two evidence-based research articles.

Critical review of a peer-reviewed article based on Blockchain and HR 

Physician’s Practice Managemen

1. Operations Planning for a Group Medical Practice
   Imagine that a group of physicians who are planning to open a single-specialty group practice has hired you as a consultant. Your job is to advise the physicians in creating a business plan that includes management strategies that will help ensure their success. The physicians have stipulated that the plan must promote medical excellence and limit their exposure to risks associated with the practice of medicine and the operational functions of the practice. In addition, they are aware that a public health emergency or natural disaster could have a significant impact on their practice, and therefor they want to include a strategy for emergency preparedness as part of their plan so that they will be able to manage their patients and help serve the community as needed. 
   Write a 4–6 page paper in which you:
   1. Compare and contrast the two main levels (i.e., internal comparison and external comparison) of financial benchmarking. Next, analyze the strategic purpose of each level of benchmarking and specify the overall importance of benchmarking as a financial planning tool for a medical practice.
   2. Recommend a Health Information Technology (HIT) system that includes an Electronic Health Record (EHR) for the new practice to implement. Support your recommendation by determining three main benefits of having this type of system for the practice.  
   3. According to the text (p. 368), some of the main areas of risk exposure for a group practice include: property (general liability and safety), technology, and financial practices. Determine one specific hazard associated with one of these risk categories and propose a strategy to mitigate the impact this risk could have on the practice. Support your analysis with a real-life example.
   4. Determine the main functions of the practice that will need to remain operational before, during, and after a natural disaster or public health emergency. Next, suggest a strategy that the practice should take to maintain communication with employees and patients, secure patient and financial records, and ensure that resources will available to care for patients during a disaster or emergency. Provide a rationale for your response. 
   5. Use at least three quality academic resources.

HA3300D – Healthcare Policy and Ethics

Assignment 01: Research Topic Options

During this course, you will be working on a research paper to be submitted at the end of Week 11. Your paper will focus on a healthcare management topic that is a source of ethics debates. It should:

1) address the ethical theories or principles that most influence current conversations about this topic.

2) discuss how these ethical theories or principles translate into healthcare policy decisions.

These ethical principles must come from the course readings this is evidence that you understand and have considered materials presented in this course.

Your paper must be 5 APA-style pages (Times New Roman, 12-point font, and with 1″ margins). In addition to these 5 pages, it must also include a “References” page formatted in APA style that includes at least 6 credible sources. You can use the Web, books, journal articles, newspapers, or magazines. Keep in mind that you want good sources for your research ones that are current and credible. During this week, you should begin thinking about a research topic to submit to your professor for approval. You can choose any topic related to healthcare ethics.

Choosing a Topic

You can choose a topic inspired by discussions, short papers, and non-graded activities. Here are a few examples of possible topics:

Should healthcare be universally available in the US? For example, should everyone receive the same quality of health care regardless of their ability to pay?

How should we make decisions about which patients receive high-cost, scarce medical resources such as organ transplant?

cultural diversity and differences in the medical environment

profitability vs. patient care

You may choose to do a paper on another topic, too, as long as it involves policy and ethics in the medical environment.

In choosing your topic, you should consider not only how interesting it is to you, but also how easy it will be to find information about it. You will need to find credible references and refer to them in your paper.

 What to Submit for this Assignment

 For this assignment, submit a list of 3 topics you are considering for your paper. For each topic:

 1) state what is interesting to you about this topic, and

 2) speculate about which ethical theories or questions are raised by this topic.

Alignment of HRM and Business Strategies

Instructions

Select a publicly-traded company to research. Evaluate its human resource (HR) and business strategy, HR department job positions, and ways it markets its company regarding human capital. The following are some of the company websites that provide this information:

• Allstate: Human Resources Careers.
• State Farm: Human Resources & Training Careers.
• Ford: Careers.
• Aruba Marriott Careers. (You can also search for other companies from the Marriott website.)

In addition, refer to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics website, which identifies detailed roles for HRM personnel and offers you some insight into HRM positions.

Requirements

Write a 2 to 3 page paper in which you:

• Propose how you would ensure the HR strategy is in alignment with the business strategy.
• Describe the HR job positions and the responsibilities listed for that HR department.
• Determine which HR job positions you would prefer and explain why.
• Analyze how the selected company can establish HRM strategies to improve competitive advantages.
• Propose three ways that the company can increase diversity.

Use at least three high-quality academic resources in this assignment. Consider beginning with your course textbook and quality sources that can be found in the Strayer Library.

Note: Wikipedia does not qualify as an academic resource.

Create an initial discussion post. 275 words, APA format with references

 Deliverable 7 – Risk Prevention Policy

Competencies

• Evaluate the safety and security compliance of organizational and employee work environments.
• Analyze organizational practices as they relate to union-related and labor relations laws.
• Design reasonable accommodations to meet the needs of employees and the organization.
• Appraise the workforce relations of an organization to ensure optimal performance.
• Integrate negotiation strategies with legal decision-making to ensure policies and practices reflect ethical values.
• Design an organizational risk management plan.

Scenario

You have been hired as the new Vice President of HR for your organization. One of the first areas in which you need to familiarize yourself with is in how well (or not) the organization manages and prevents risk. Upon review, you realize that there is no comprehensive policy for risk prevention and management currently in place. You report your findings to the CEO, who agrees that this lack of documented policy must be corrected immediately. The CEO has instructed you to develop a policy document to protect the organization and its employees from risk. As part of your role as VP of HR, you will need to research your organization, note that it is publicly-traded.

Instructions

Based on your research, prepare a policy document for the company that:

• Outlines standards for employee safety and security.
• Designs measures for reasonable accommodation.
• Designates critical components that must be addressed to assure business continuity in the event of a natural disaster.
• Describes how management decisions must align to the ethical values of the organization.
• Illustrates the impact of labor laws and unions.
• Incorporates a Human Resources audit.
• Provides attribution for credible sources used in the policy document.

As shown by the timeline of major employment laws, sometimes referred to as labor laws, these have been in place for many years. Many have been updated to be more relevant for the workplace during various times in the United States. While these laws continue to evolve, the purpose of employment laws is to protect individual workers and employers right along with them to promote a more productive, safe working environment.

You will begin this assignment by researching and selecting one of the older employment laws such as the Fair Labor and Standards Act, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, or the American with Disabilities Act (ADA). Then, research and select a recently changed or newly implemented employment law. Think of relevant current topics such as changes in sick leave or family leave laws, or the new ban-the-box or pregnancy accommodation legislation. Now, in the role of an HR manager, develop a narrated PowerPoint presentation explaining the laws you have selected. You are to present your information at the next team meeting with your HR associates. Address the following in your presentation:

• Explain the laws and what they cover.
• Determine how the obsoleter employment law and the more recent one vary from each other. Provide examples of how this influences HR supervisors’ and team members’ roles.
• Assess the impact of the laws for employees and the organization.
• Include important steps supervisors must take to ensure compliance with employment laws.

Incorporate appropriate animations, transitions, and graphics as well as speaker notes for each slide. The speaker notes may be comprised of brief paragraphs or bulleted lists and should cite material appropriately. Add audio to each slide using the Media section of the Insert tab in the top menu bar for each slide.

Support your presentation with at least five scholarly resources. In addition to these specified resources, other appropriate scholarly resources may be included.

Length: 12-15 slides (with a separate reference slide)

Notes Length: 200-350 words for each slide

Be sure to include citations for quotations and paraphrases with references in APA format and style where appropriate. 

Need two paragraphs on ways in which stakeholders affect communication.

1 reference.

 Let X  = (X1,…,Xn) be the blood pressure (measured in mmHg) and let Y = (Y1,…,Yn) be the cortisol level (measured in mcg/dL) recorded for n = 79 patients recruited for a study in a hospital (Xi and Yi are measurements for the same patient). What test is most appropriate to gather evidence towards the alternative hypothesis that blood pressure is associated with cortisol level? Please provide the reasoning in detail for your answer.

A)  The two-sample paired t-test with the null hypothesis that the means of X and Y differ.

B)  The test with the null hypothesis that the Pearson correlation coefficient between X and Y is zero.

C)  The test with the null hypothesis that the regression coefficient is zero in a linear regression with response variable X (blood pressure) and explanatory variable Y (cortisol level).

(5 points)

ii)  Suppose that a treatment is proposed to reduce the duration from the time of infection date, to the time at which a first negative test is recorded in people with mild COVID-19 (call this time period the duration). Suppose that 27 people with mild COVID-19 (the study population) are administered the treatment and 73 people with mild COVID-19 are not administered the

treatment (the control population). Both populations are sampled from patients tested at the same clinic over the same period. Let the durations for the study sample be X = (X1, X2,…), and the durations for the control sample be Y = (Y1, Y2,…). What test is most appropriate to gather evidence towards the alternative hypothesis that the treatment reduces the duration? Please provide the reasoning for your answer. Please provide the reasoning in detail for your answer.

A)  The one-sided two-sample unpaired t-test with H0: The mean of X is greater than or equal to the mean of Y.

B)  The one-sided two-sample unpaired t-test with the null hypothesis that the mean of X is less than or equal to the mean of Y.

C)  The test against the null hypothesis that the Spearman’s ranked correlation coefficient between X and Y is zero.

D)  The one-sided two-sample paired t-test against H0: The mean difference between Xi and Yi is less than or equal to zero.

E)  The two-sided two-sample paired t-test with the null hypothesis that the mean difference between Xi and Yi is zero.

(5 points)

iii)  Road vehicle accidents involving ambulances have more detrimental outcomes than accidents involving other similarly sized vehicles (Ray and Kupas, 2005). Measures to avoid such accidents are continually being refined by organizations involved in emergency medical services. Suppose that a city council is interested in knowing if adoption of such measures has lead to an improvement over the last decade. Suppose that the ratio between the number of accidents 

iv)  involving ambulances (the numerator) and the number of kilometers driven by ambulances (the denominator) has been recorded (rt with units’ number of accidents per kilometer year) for each year t over the past decade. Which single one of the following statistical quantities is most relevant 

for investigating whether or not measures are leading to improvements? Please provide the reasoning in detail for your answer.

A)  The sample standard deviation of rt.

B)  The sample mean of rt.

C)  The Pearson correlation coefficient ρ between rt and t.

D)  The regression coefficient for t in a linear regression with rt as the response variable and t as the explanatory variable.

E)  The regression coefficient for rt in a linear regression with rt as the explanatory variable and t as the response variable.

Problem 2: Bayes’ rule

A study was conducted to assess the sensitivity and specificity of four different human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) serology tests (Koblavi-D`eme et al. 2001). The Determine test was among the four, it was developed by Abbott Laboratories (an American provider of health care, medical devices and pharmaceuticals) and was found to have a true negative rate (the true negative rate is also called specificity) of 99.4% and a true positive rate (the true positive rate is also called sensitivity) of 100%. The true negative rate of a test for a disease is the probability that someone without the disease tests negative. The true positive rate of a test for a disease is the probability that someone with the disease tests positive. HIV may be transmitted from an expecting parent to their child by transmission during childbirth or by transmission to the fetus during pregnancy (throughout, assume that there’s no other way for a newborn to be infected). Treatment by the drugs zidovudine or nevirapine has been shown to reduce the rate of these sorts of transmission of HIV by 38% to 50% in the absence of other intervention (Koblavi-D`eme et al. 2001).

a) Suppose that an expecting parent is infected with HIV and they are treated with zidovudine or nevirapine during pregnancy. Suppose that after they give birth, a Determine serology test reports a positive test for HIV. What is the probability that the child does not have HIV? Round your answer to the nearest 10-th of a percent.

 (6 points) 

b) UNAIDS (an organization established by the United Nations Economic and Social Council) estimates the prevalence of HIV in Cˆote d’Ivoire among people aged 15-49 to be 2.6%. If a Determine serology test reported a positive test for HIV in someone selected uniformly at random among all people in Cˆote d’Ivoire aged 15-49, what is the probability that the person does not have HIV? Round your answer to the nearest 10-th of a percent.

(4 points)

c) In the USA, according to the Centers for Disease Control (a public health institute within the United States Department of Health and Human Services), if someone has a positive serology test for HIV they are not diagnosed as HIV-positive until a second follow-up test also yields a positive test result. What is the probability that someone is incorrectly diagnosed as HIV-positive (i.e., if someone is not infected with HIV, what is the probability that their first test and also their second follow-up test are both positive)? Suppose that both tests are Determine serology tests, and also assume that the test results are statistically independent. Express your answer in expected number of events in a million (i.e. something like ‘a 36 in a million chance’ or ‘a one in a million chance’). Also: In one sentence, what is a possible argument as to why the assumption of independence of the two test results might be wrong? (Your argument does not have to be sound, but it must be valid without being tautological).

 (3 points) 

d) What is the probability that an HIV infected expecting parent transmits HIV to their child either during childbirth or through transmitting HIV to the fetus during pregnancy, given that the parent has not received treatment with the drugs zidovudine or nevirapine, and in the absence of other intervention, according to the preamble of this problem (in concordance with Koblavi-D`eme et al. 2001)?

(2 points) Let X  = (X1,…,Xn) be the blood pressure (measured in mmHg) and let Y = (Y1,…,Yn) be the cortisol level (measured in mcg/dL) recorded for n = 79 patients recruited for a study in a hospital (Xi and Yi are measurements for the same patient). What test is most appropriate to gather evidence towards the alternative hypothesis that blood pressure is associated with cortisol level? Please provide the reasoning in detail for your answer.

A)  The two-sample paired t-test with the null hypothesis that the means of X and Y differ.

B)  The test with the null hypothesis that the Pearson correlation coefficient between X and Y is zero.

C)  The test with the null hypothesis that the regression coefficient is zero in a linear regression with response variable X (blood pressure) and explanatory variable Y (cortisol level).

(5 points)

ii)  Suppose that a treatment is proposed to reduce the duration from the time of infection date, to the time at which a first negative test is recorded in people with mild COVID-19 (call this time period the duration). Suppose that 27 people with mild COVID-19 (the study population) are administered the treatment and 73 people with mild COVID-19 are not administered the

treatment (the control population). Both populations are sampled from patients tested at the same clinic over the same period. Let the durations for the study sample be X = (X1, X2,…), and the durations for the control sample be Y = (Y1, Y2,…). What test is most appropriate to gather evidence towards the alternative hypothesis that the treatment reduces the duration? Please provide the reasoning for your answer. Please provide the reasoning in detail for your answer.

A)  The one-sided two-sample unpaired t-test with H0: The mean of X is greater than or equal to the mean of Y.

B)  The one-sided two-sample unpaired t-test with the null hypothesis that the mean of X is less than or equal to the mean of Y.

C)  The test against the null hypothesis that the Spearman’s ranked correlation coefficient between X and Y is zero.

D)  The one-sided two-sample paired t-test against H0: The mean difference between Xi and Yi is less than or equal to zero.

E)  The two-sided two-sample paired t-test with the null hypothesis that the mean difference between Xi and Yi is zero.

(5 points)

iii)  Road vehicle accidents involving ambulances have more detrimental outcomes than accidents involving other similarly sized vehicles (Ray and Kupas, 2005). Measures to avoid such accidents are continually being refined by organizations involved in emergency medical services. Suppose that a city council is interested in knowing if adoption of such measures has lead to an improvement over the last decade. Suppose that the ratio between the number of accidents 

iv)  involving ambulances (the numerator) and the number of kilometers driven by ambulances (the denominator) has been recorded (rt with units’ number of accidents per kilometer year) for each year t over the past decade. Which single one of the following statistical quantities is most relevant 

for investigating whether or not measures are leading to improvements? Please provide the reasoning in detail for your answer.

A)  The sample standard deviation of rt.

B)  The sample mean of rt.

C)  The Pearson correlation coefficient ρ between rt and t.

D)  The regression coefficient for t in a linear regression with rt as the response variable and t as the explanatory variable.

E)  The regression coefficient for rt in a linear regression with rt as the explanatory variable and t as the response variable.

Problem 2: Bayes’ rule

A study was conducted to assess the sensitivity and specificity of four different human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) serology tests (Koblavi-D`eme et al. 2001). The Determine test was among the four, it was developed by Abbott Laboratories (an American provider of health care, medical devices and pharmaceuticals) and was found to have a true negative rate (the true negative rate is also called specificity) of 99.4% and a true positive rate (the true positive rate is also called sensitivity) of 100%. The true negative rate of a test for a disease is the probability that someone without the disease tests negative. The true positive rate of a test for a disease is the probability that someone with the disease tests positive. HIV may be transmitted from an expecting parent to their child by transmission during childbirth or by transmission to the fetus during pregnancy (throughout, assume that there’s no other way for a newborn to be infected). Treatment by the drugs zidovudine or nevirapine has been shown to reduce the rate of these sorts of transmission of HIV by 38% to 50% in the absence of other intervention (Koblavi-D`eme et al. 2001).

a) Suppose that an expecting parent is infected with HIV and they are treated with zidovudine or nevirapine during pregnancy. Suppose that after they give birth, a Determine serology test reports a positive test for HIV. What is the probability that the child does not have HIV? Round your answer to the nearest 10-th of a percent.

 (6 points) 

b) UNAIDS (an organization established by the United Nations Economic and Social Council) estimates the prevalence of HIV in Cˆote d’Ivoire among people aged 15-49 to be 2.6%. If a Determine serology test reported a positive test for HIV in someone selected uniformly at random among all people in Cˆote d’Ivoire aged 15-49, what is the probability that the person does not have HIV? Round your answer to the nearest 10-th of a percent.

(4 points)

c) In the USA, according to the Centers for Disease Control (a public health institute within the United States Department of Health and Human Services), if someone has a positive serology test for HIV they are not diagnosed as HIV-positive until a second follow-up test also yields a positive test result. What is the probability that someone is incorrectly diagnosed as HIV-positive (i.e., if someone is not infected with HIV, what is the probability that their first test and also their second follow-up test are both positive)? Suppose that both tests are Determine serology tests, and also assume that the test results are statistically independent. Express your answer in expected number of events in a million (i.e. something like ‘a 36 in a million chance’ or ‘a one in a million chance’). Also: In one sentence, what is a possible argument as to why the assumption of independence of the two test results might be wrong? (Your argument does not have to be sound, but it must be valid without being tautological).

 (3 points) 

d) What is the probability that an HIV infected expecting parent transmits HIV to their child either during childbirth or through transmitting HIV to the fetus during pregnancy, given that the parent has not received treatment with the drugs zidovudine or nevirapine, and in the absence of other intervention, according to the preamble of this problem (in concordance with Koblavi-D`eme et al. 2001)?

(2 points)