Strategic planning

Please respond to the following posts. 

Mission, Vision, Values

Theresa posted Jun 6 

The purpose of the Southwest Airlines is to ensure the safety of people that are aboard their planes while providing them with a friendly and reliable staff at a low cost. Southwest Airlines vision is to become the best of all while being the most profitable. Their values are healthcare spirit, heart and attitude much like in healthcare (“Purpose, Vision, Values, and Mission”, 2019). Also, the airlines focus on low costs while providing safety and reliability and customer service. The mission of South Airlines is quality in customer service, friendliness and spirit (“Purpose, Vision, Values, and Mission”, 2019).

Southwest Airlines statements that are well written:

“Work the Southwest way” while providing safety and reliability (“Purpose, Vision, Values, and Mission”, 2019).

Dedication to the highest quality of Customer Service (“Purpose, Vision, Values, and Mission”, 2019).

Southwest Airlines statements that are not well written:

To become the most profitable organization in the industry.

Be famous by providing a loving and warm service.

Individual pride, and Company Spirit (“Purpose, Vision, Values, and Mission”, 2019).

These statements that are not well written because they focus on profitability and not the quality of the organization. They also do not set up a positive culture of following the standardized procedure of safety and security for the customers. These statements should not be about money but about the well being of the customers. The choices that I chose that were well written focus on the customers and the quality they all deserve. The correct statements show a culture that Southwest Airlines wants people to see and be a part of because of the quality and reliability they provide to the customers. Finally, the vision, mission and value statement for any company should be designed to help improve its performance over the years.

Reference

Purpose, Vision, Values, and Mission. (2019). Retrieved from http://investors.southwest.com/our-company/purpose-vision-values-and-mission

Strategic planning

Southwest Mission Statement

Kyra D posted Jun 6

The mission of Southwest Airlines is dedication to the highest quality of Customer Service delivered with a sense of warmth, friendliness, individual pride, and Company Spirit (Southwest Airlines Co, 2019).

The statement above is a well-written statement because it gives travelers of Southwest an expectation. It sets the standard for the company and it also describes how Southwest intends to deliver on its promise. This statement is to the point but allows room for a customer to set an expectation. This then provides Southwest with the opportunity for direct feedback. If this mission statement is made available to their travelers and they ask how they did, their travel now has some standards to grade the experience. These standards are also good because it is the ones that Southwest outlined, so they should be attainable.

The mission of Southwest Airlines is dedication to the highest quality of Customer Service.

The original mission statement from Southwest Airlines had more content than this simple statement expressing their desire to want to provide high quality service. This statement is missing the promise that I believe mission statements should have. As a consumer I am happy to know that you want to give me high quality service, but I would like to know how you intend to do that. Without the “how” your customer has an open-ended expectation. This leaves room for the customer to come up with expectations that Southwest did not set or that Southwest can not meet. If I am a traveler and the flight-attendant is rude there is no promise to me that she won’t be. The original statement told me exactly what I should expect from any employee of Southwest.

References:

Southwest Airlines Co. (n.d.). Purpose, Vision, Values, and Mission. Retrieved fromhttp://investors.southwest.com/our-company/purpose-vision-values-and-missio

HealthCare Finance 

Mod 3 Profit Analysis

Sarah W Jun 6

A fee-for-service model was, up until health care reform forced health insurance agencies and healthcare providers to adapt, one of the most common billing structures in health care where each service or treatment provided cost a different amount. In the fee-for-service model, health care providers make more money each time they order a procedure or test, and this model has come under scrutiny in recent years for potentially abusing the system (Insight TXCIN, 2019). With no regulation, doctors could essentially rack up unnecessary charges and patients could request superfluous services while ultimately driving the cost of health care up for everyone involved in the payment scheme.

Capitation came as a means to end excessive and unnecessary spending on health care diagnostics by way of a payment model that caps each patient’s potential value at a certain dollar amount. Providers are paid a monthly rate per-member-per-month which breaks down to making x amount of dollars whether you treat one patient or 5,000 (Insight TXCIN, 2019). This payment model can be most beneficial to hospitals and health care providers if they are able to meet their minimum monthly quota of covered lives without providing excess services that eat into the bottom-line profit margin of the facility.

The capitation model more closely reflects the values of health care reform because the aim is to keep costs down while still emphasizing quality service. To maximize profits for providers under a capitated environment model, there is a fine margin of volume based on utilization that must be met yet not exceeded (Reiter & Song, 2018). Insurance companies who are also running a tight business budget have created pay-for-performance systems to maximize their own bottom dollar in the modernized world of health care reform which combine capitation and pay-for-service structures (Reither & Song, 2018).

References:

Healthcare.gov. (2019). Fee for Service. Retrieved from https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/fee-for-servic…

Insight TXCIN. (2019). For Value Based Healthcare Choices. Retrieved from http://www.insight-txcin.org/

Reiter, K.L., & Song, P.H. (2018). Gapenski’s fundamentals of healthcare finance (3rd ed.). Chicago, IL: Health Administration Press.

Healthcare Finance

Planning and Budgeting

Kyra D posted Jun 6

Budgets can take many forms. This week we took a look at simple and flexible budgets. These budgets differ and serve different purposes in the financial world, but the both are great tools. Simple budgets do not change, but flexible budgets do. They have the capabilities of fluctuating with volume and are deemed more sophisticated for that reason. Flexible budgets can relay information about the activity of a business and the simple budget can reflect what a business envisions the activity to be.

Simple budgets do not account for potential changes that arise like a flexible budget can. Flexible budgets leave room for change and the simple budget in a fixed amount. These different budgets however help account for the variance seen. The variance can be favorable if the simple budget falls below the flexible budget. These things are taken into account when department finances are thought about.

References:

Averkamp, H. (n.d.). What is a flexible budget variance? | AccountingCoach. Retrieved June 6, 2019, from https://www.accountingcoach.com/blog/what-is-a-flexible-budget-variance

Substance abuse and the Family

Please respond to the following 4 posts (minimum of 75 words per post)

Substance Dependence and Mental Health

Elena Hposted Jun 6 

People suffer from a variety of mental disorders ranging from depression, generalized anxiety disorder, and bipolar disorder. Medications can treat the symptoms, but they do not cure the disorder (Hart & Ksir, 2018). Diagnosing the disorder and choosing an appropriate medication seems to be essentially a game of trial and error. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) was compiled to categorize disorders and medications, but it can take weeks to know if the medication is alleviating symptoms. The use of medications to treat mental disorders can be beneficial, but prescribers seem to be quick to rely on pills before a proper diagnosis has been made. A family member shared their horror story with me where they were diagnosed after one session of therapy and prescribed medication that induced depilating anxiety with temporary loss of consciousness. I guess the positive side is that they did not take the medication long enough to become dependent on it. How isolated is that incident though? Prescribers are making it worse. Medications play a role in treating mental disorders, but you still have to treat the mind. It is sad to me because of the sensitive nature of mental health and the addictive nature of these medications. People are seeking help, which takes courage in and of itself, and they could end up with a drug addiction for their efforts.

Hart, C.L., & Ksir, C. (2018). Drugs, society & human behavior (17th ed.), Medication for mental disorders (pp. 160-180).  New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education.

Substance Dependence and Mental Health

Alicia posted Jun 6

When a person has a mental illness/mental disorder medical provider will try to put the person on a medication to help control the illness or disorder. Do I feel the medication the medical providers give the patients cure the illness or disorder; no, I think medication may try to curve the side effects from the illness or disorder for the moment. Sometimes you never know how a person body may react to certain medication depending on the medication side effects. A person may be taking medication for depression, but the side effects my give them suicidal thoughts. On the other hand, a person may take the medication and it could take away their depression. I feel no matter what you take there is a side effect to a medication that will have to correlate with a person chemical balance to either mix well or throw the chemical balance off. Will the medication ever cure them? No, it won’t!!!

Current Literature Review

Lashanda S posted Jun 6

Prenatal Cocaine exposure increases the risk of higher teen drug use

In the 1980’s the world suffered from a cocaine and crack epidemic. The article that I read ” Prenatal Cocaine exposure increases the risk of higher teen drug use”, talks about babies that were exposed in the womb back then to crack, and cocaine, are affected as teenagers and young adults today. According to researchers at Case Western Reserve University, these children suffer from several issues, due to their mothers using cocaine while pregnant. For example, poor coping strategies, handling stress in a negative way, and are at a higher risk to use drugs themselves in comparison to a child who was not exposed. Studies show that an estimated 3 million kids are still affected from this. At age 15, more than 36 percent of these kids had used drugs; at the age of 17 it was 43 percent (2017). Many of the kids that participated in the study, came from bad situations, to include abusive homes (2017). Cocaine is dangerous in any form to any one, but extremely damaging to a fetus, affecting a person’s life forever.

Case Western Reserve University. (2017, May 3). Prenatal cocaine exposure increases risk of higher teen drug use. ScienceDaily. Retrieved June 6, 2019 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170503080213…

Journal Reference

Sonia Minnes, Meeyoung O. Min, June-Yung Kim, Meredith W. Francis, Adelaide Lang, Miaoping Wu, Lynn T. Singer. The association of prenatal cocaine exposure, externalizing behavior and adolescent substance use. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 2017; DOI: 10.1016/j.drugalcdep.2017.01.027

Current Literature Review

Ashley  posted Jun 6

The article that I decided to write about is called, The Study of Effects of Drug Addicted Fathers on Families in Tehran, Iran.It was published in 2018 and has a lot of information containing the outcomes that narcotics have on not only families, but the system as well. Taking place in Tehran, Iran, it goes to talk about a wide range of abused drugs and their effects. Some of the outcomes drug abusing fathers have are tension, anxiety, uncertainty, danger, isolation, loneliness, deprivation of support, pain, misery, and even homicide (Farzizadeh, 2018). The addicts become someone other than “themselves” as the drugs take over them. This could be cocaine, or any other addictive substance. Laws are broken, families are destroyed, and society effected as a whole. Addicts begin to break laws and can harm innocent people and even their loved ones. Many times, once spouses discovered that their significant other had an addition to cocaine for example, they felt out of the loop since many times it is hidden from them as the addict tries to solve the issue by themselves (Farzizadeh, 2018). Finances are wrecked and fear is twisted into the atmosphere for what the future might hold. 

Reference

Farzizadeh, Z. (2018). A study of the effects of drug addicted fathers on families in tehran, iran. 

Pertanika Journal. 26(T), 216-224. Retrieved from http://eds.b.ebscohost.com.db24.linccweb.org/eds/p…