Data-driven decision making

Week 9: Data-Driven Decision Making for Health care Administration

Simulation 1

How might healthcare administration leaders use analytic techniques, such as simulation, to enhance healthcare delivery? What information should be used when adopting simulation strategies for healthcare administration practice?

The world of health care is not stagnant. In fact, it can seem more like a gray haze, wherein uncertainties; constraints for time and resources; and no single set of rules demand extreme attention and execution for the well-being of the patient population. Thus, when something unexpected occurs, how do health services organizations and healthcare administration leaders plan for, and execute, effective healthcare delivery?

With ongoing simulation techniques, practice, and analytics for informing healthcare delivery, healthcare administration leaders can execute and command effective decision making.

1. This week, you explore simulation techniques for healthcare administration practice. You consider how simulation may be used in health services organizations and apply simulation techniques to address healthcare administration problems.

Learning Objectives

Students will:

· Analyze how simulation might be used in health services organizations

· Apply simulation techniques to healthcare administration practice

Learning Resources

Note: To access this week’s required library resources, please click on the link to the Course Readings List, found in the Course Materials section of your Syllabus.

Required Readings

Albright, S. C., & Winston, W. L. (2017). Business analytics: Data analysis and decision making (6th ed.). Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning.

Chapter 15, "Introduction to Simulation Modeling"

Required Media

Palisade [PalisadeCorp]. (2014a, January 29). Introduction to Monte Carlo simulation and risk analysis using @RISK and RISKOptimzer [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgAHLRxjBsA&feature=youtu.be

Discussion Part( 2 pages)

Simulation for Performance Improvement

As you have examined this week, simulation as an analytic tool can assist healthcare administration leaders execute important improvement initiatives. Simulations can be used to determine the impact of hospital outbreaks, shortages in staff, potential disaster events, or even financial challenges that might impact healthcare delivery for a health services organization. As a current or future healthcare administration leader, the ability to use simulation as an analytic technique will help you execute sound decision making to tackle healthcare administration challenges.

1. For this Discussion, review the resources for this week, and consider those issues that might most affect healthcare administration practice. Consider how those issues might be addressed through the process of using simulation as an analytic technique, and reflect on how you might apply the process of simulation to address these issues.

By Day 3

2. Post an explanation of how simulation might be used to improve performance in your health services organization or one with which you are familiar. Be specific, and provide examples.

By Day 5

Continue the Discussion and respond to your colleagues in one or more of the following ways:

· Ask a probing question, substantiated with additional background information, evidence, or research.

· Share an insight from having read your colleagues' postings, synthesizing the information to provide new perspectives.

· Offer and support an alternative perspective, using readings from the classroom or from your own research in the Walden Library.

· Validate an idea with your own experience and additional research.

· Make a suggestion based on additional evidence drawn from readings or after synthesizing multiple postings.

· Expand on your colleagues' postings by providing additional insights or contrasting perspectives based on readings and evidence.

Submission and Grading Information

Grading Criteria

To access your rubric:

Week 9 Discussion Rubric

Post by Day 3 and Respond by Day 5

To participate in this Discussion: Week 9 Discussion

Assignment 9 ( 3 pages excel )

Simulation in Health Care

Sometimes, challenges or issues in healthcare delivery are not prescriptive in nature and cannot be solved using pure optimization. Simulation provides healthcare administration leaders and decision makers a method to evaluate problems using probabilistic components. For example, a primary care queueing problem might logically follow a Poisson process and be modeled using simulation techniques.

For this Assignment, review the resources for this week, and examine the different simulation techniques highlighted. Reflect on how these simulation techniques might apply to specific challenges or issues for healthcare delivery. Then, complete the assigned problems for the Assignment.

The Assignment: (5 pages)

Complete Problem 40 on page 825 of your course text.

Note: You will be using Excel and @Risk for this Assignment.

Problem 40 question from Textbook.

A flexible Savings Account (FSA) plan allows you to put money into an account at the beginning of the calendar year that can be used for medical expenses. This amount is not subject to federal tax. As you pay medical expenses during the year, you are reimbursed by the administrator of the FSA until the money is exhausted. From that point on, you must pay your medical expenses out of your own pocket. On the other hand, if you put more money into your FSA than the medical expenses you incur, this extra more is lost to you. Your annul salary is $80, 000 and your federal income tax rate is 30%.

A. Assume that your medical expenses in a year are normally distributed with mean $2000 and standard deviation $500. Build a RISK model in which the output is the amount of money left to you after paying taxes, putting money in an FSA, and paying any extra medical expenses. Experiment with the amount of money put in the FSA, using a RISKSIMTABLE function.

B. Rework part a, but this time assume a gamma distribution for your annual medical expenses. Use 16 and 125 as the two parameters of this distribution. These imply the same mean and standard deviation as in part a. but the distribution of medical expenses is now skewed to the right, which is probably more realistic. Using simulation, see whether you should now put more or less money in an FSA than in the symmetric case in part a.

By Day 7

Submit your answers and embedded analysis as a Microsoft Word management report.

Submission and Grading Information

To submit your completed Assignment for review and grading, do the following:

Please save your Assignment using the naming convention “WK9Assgn+last name+first initial.(extension)” as the name.

Click the Week 9 Assignment Rubric to review the Grading Criteria for the Assignment.

Click the Week 9 Assignment link. You will also be able to “View Rubric” for grading criteria from this area.

Next, from the Attach File area, click on the Browse My Computer button. Find the document you saved as “WK9Assgn+last name+first initial.(extension)” and click Open.

If applicable: From the Plagiarism Tools area, click the checkbox for I agree to submit my paper(s) to the Global Reference Database.

Click on the Submit button to complete your submission.

Grading Criteria

To access your rubric:

Week 9 Assignment Rubric

Check Your Assignment Draft for Authenticity

To check your Assignment draft for authenticity:

Submit your Week 9 Assignment draft and review the originality report.

Submit Your Assignment by Day 7

To submit your Assignment: Week 9 Assignment