IUP Healthcare issues Assignment: Issue Analysis – Final Paper

Getting Started

Upon successful completion of the course material, you will be able to:

Examine current issues in Healthcare Policy and Management.

Resources

• File: Issue Analysis Outline

Background Information

Issue Analysis Guidance

Opportunities for analyzing issues, problems, or situations are found in every discipline, workplace, and real-life situations.  As a healthcare administrator, you will be called upon to think about, closely examine, and often write documents that analyze in order to understand complicated issues in our professions or lives.

An issue analysis looks at an issue from two or more points of view and then develops a reasoned response.  Factual material is used in support of opinions.

• In this issue analysis, you will write a well-researched analytical report that examines, explains and analyzes an issue – with multiple, possibly conflicting perspectives.  Your report will include background information that readers need in order to understand the issue.  Additionally, it will contain an analysis of the opinions of various stakeholders and subtopics of the larger issue.  Your goal is to write a coherent, sophisticated analysis that will engage and inform your readers.

Thesis Statement

Your thesis statement is centered on an inclusive sentence or sentences that provide an overview for the reader and predicts the content of your paper.  If your issue is the use of prescription drug abuse, for example, your thesis should address the various stakeholders’ perspectives on this issue and be clear, specific, and focused.  You will want to synthesize the various components of this problem and analyze how the various articles you research are arguing the solution to the problem or why there is a problem.

Your beginning thesis is a ‘working thesis’.  As you write your first draft of the paper, you will return to and change your thesis to include perhaps another perspective that you might have discovered through research.  The thesis in your final paper will be that polished and finished statement or statements that are all-inclusive and synthesize the various sub-issues or perspectives covered in the paper.

The following questions/points may be helpful to you in developing your analysis.

What is the main issue?

Define any specific vocabulary needed to understand this issue.

Identify all possible positions on the issue.  Which two are the key opposing sides?

Find all of the facts that support one position.

Find all of the facts that support the opposing position.

What beliefs/values are in conflict in this issue?

Take a position on the issue.  Explain why you chose this position.

How could you influence others to support your position?

What steps did you use to analyze this issue?

Analysis of Perspectives/Sub-Issues/Stakeholders

In your research, you will need to find articles, both scholarly and mainstream press, which support any claim you make.  You will use this research to build a framework in your paper that analyzes the views of various perspectives/sub-issues/stakeholders within the larger issue.  You will also examine the justifications made by these groups.  Your analysis should be sophisticated.  It should not only see two sides of an issue but also multiple parts of the larger situation, while carefully examining or analyzing each part.

Organization

Your essay should follow a clear organization plan that is logical and easy for the reader to understand.  The thesis statement should give the readers a sense of this plan.  Sentences and paragraphs should be coherent and focused, and transitions should help the essay to flow clearly.

1. Research, Support, or Evidence:
2. You will need to back up each claim you make within the analysis.  Use your sources to build credibility and gain authority to speak as a writer on the topic.  Your aim is to persuade the audience of your deeper understanding of the issue, thus you must use credible sources to back up everything you say.  You can use your knowledge of ethical, emotional, or logical appeals to analyze what various groups write about their role in the problem.  You will want to avoid logical fallacies within your own writing.  You will use both direct quotes and paraphrases and cite sources correctly according to APA citation guidelines. 
3. Your 10 references should be credible with 7-8 coming from scholarly sources.  You can also use respected news sources; however, these are not scholarly and will not count toward the 7-8.  You should show that you are able to evaluate the credibility in the selection of your sources.  Selected information should be relevant to the central argument and quoted or paraphrased correctly to support each claim.  Direct quotations should make-up no more than 10% of your paper.  They should be well integrated into developed paragraphs and not just dropped in but also contextualized.  Therefore, each quote or paraphrase should back up or provide some support for your ideas/analysis. 
4. Formatting
5. Include an interesting and descriptive title that clearly announces the issue you are analyzing.
6. Must be 7 to 10 pages in length not including title and reference pages and any appendices.
7. Follow APA formatting guidelines.
8. Grading
9. Your paper will be graded on the following:

Analysis

Synthesis/Thesis

Organization

Research (use of sources, integrating sources, etc.)

Conventions (style, grammar, etc.)

Instructions

Review the rubric to make sure you understand the criteria for earning your grade.

This assignment is the final paper you will present to the Committee of the Senate.

Review Chapters 1-19 in Changing the U.S. Health Care System: Key Issues in Health Services Policy and Management.

Consider the previous submissions and feedback received from prior workshops.

Using a proper APA layout, citations, and references page, submit the final draft of the Issue Analysis.

When you’ve completed your assignment, save a copy for yourself and submit a copy to your instructor using the Assignment submission page by the end of the workshop.