Legal Dilemma
You are the hospital administrator for a county hospital, which is funded in a large part by that county’s property taxes. You discover that you have an indigent patient who has been mistakenly admitted as an inpatient to the hospital strictly for dialysis treatment. The hospital does not, as a general practice, provide only dialysis treatment for patients. This is beyond the scope of the hospital’s mandate and is therefore, an inappropriate use of local property tax funding.
If the indigent patient is discharged from the hospital and dialysis treatment is terminated, the patient will become toxic and experience severe physical consequences, even death. However, if the patient is kept in the hospital for purposes of dialysis treatment only, the hospital must assume the burden of the patient’s debt, without revenue to cover the associated cost.
Based on your understanding of the above scenario, create a report in a Microsoft Word document that includes an analysis using the classic decision model to keep the patient in the hospital or discharge them.
Include:
An introduction
Definition of the problem.
Identification of the stakeholders.
Identification of alternative solutions.
Evaluation of alternative solutions.
Solution chosen and how to implement it with the stakeholders.
Conclusion and reflection of this process.
To support your work, use your course and textbook readings and also use the South University Online Library. As in all assignments, cite your sources in your work and provide references for the citations in APA format.
Submission Details:
Your assignment should be addressed in a 2- to 3-page document.
Submit your documents to the Submissions Area by the due date assigned.
Sample Answer
HCM4012 w1a
Generally, several county hospitals receive funds to cater for their clients from taxes. This is because as the county government has a right to collect taxes, it as well has a right to allocate funding to these particular hospitals based on sociodemographic activity and criteria (Raffoul & Phillips 2017). When allocated with these funds, the administrators should be very keen on how they use them not to make a mistake of inappropriate use as there can be consequences on their side and the hospital in general. This paper seeks to discuss on a legal dilemma that occurred in an hospital where I was an administrator defining the problem statement, identification of stakeholders, identification of alternative solutions, evaluation of the alternative solutions and solution chosen and how to implement it with stakeholders.
Problem Statement
Following the case study provided, being an administrator in a county hospital funded by county property taxes, there’s a problem that it doesn’t afford dialysis treatment for the patients, and an event like that is well-thought-out beyond the scope of the Hospital. Thus, sustaining and caring for a dialysis patient here may lead to inappropriate use of the local property tax-based funding. Once again, the patient, having been mistakenly admitted in Hospital, expects treatment, and such miscommunication that occurred in the Hospital may be considered a severe issue. Suppose our patient is discharged from the Hospital, and the dialysis treatment is entirely terminated, events may get completely toxic, and the patient may even have more severe consequences and death. So, the problem here related to the miscommunication and deprivation of skill of decision-making and correspondingly referral skills at hospitals side may go hand in hand with the Hospital as it would be a victim for patients’ debt. In such a case, it’s good to make an ideal decision, and since the patient’s life is more important, the patient should be kept in the Hospital, and this should be a lesson not to make the same mistake again in the future.
Identification of Stakeholders
Numerous stakeholders can be identified in the case, such as patients, the management team, hospital administration, physicians, staff nurses, various associated parties with the Hospital, vendors, and competitors (Schwingrouber et al., 2021). All these are regarded as stakeholders for the hospital organization. They are all individuals who are significantly influenced by this Hospital and have vested attention to its success.
Identification of Alternative Solutions
It would be good for the Hospital to identify alternative solutions for the identified problem. Thus, an alternative solution would clearly be specifying the form of services accessible in this Hospital to ensure no intake of any patients with diverse diseases as according to the services not available. The Hospital must also create several referrals and a recommendation program for their patients so they won’t get hopeless and may comfortably move to the appropriate Hospital for the purposes of treatment. As well, the Hospital may develop more infrastructure for services that aren’t currently accessible.
Evaluation of the Alternative Solutions
Evaluation of all alternative solutions get along with finding severe success factors required for execution purpose and before execution, it would be a good understanding if all the alternate solutions are achievable and practicable and may be employed with cost, time, and other constraints. It would also be good to understand the benefits that specific solutions may afford, such as effecting solutions and keeping all equipment and physicians for treatment of dialysis requirement accessibility of several facilities and resources and as it may help numerous clients as accessible in the community, attain treatment at reasonable costs.
