Assignment: Analysis of a Pertinent Healthcare Issue

The Quadruple Aim provides broad categories of goals to pursue to maintain and improve healthcare. Within each goal are many issues that, if addressed successfully, may have a positive impact on outcomes. For example, healthcare leaders are being tasked to shift from an emphasis on disease management often provided in an acute care setting to health promotion and disease prevention delivered in primary care settings. Efforts in this area can have significant positive impacts by reducing the need for primary healthcare and by reducing the stress on the healthcare system.

Changes in the industry only serve to stress what has always been true; namely, that the healthcare field has always faced significant challenges, and that goals to improve healthcare will always involve multiple stakeholders. This should not seem surprising given the circumstances. Indeed, when a growing population needs care, there are factors involved such as the demands of providing that care and the rising costs associated with healthcare. Generally, it is not surprising that the field of healthcare is an industry facing multifaceted issues that evolve over time.

In this module’s Discussion, you reviewed some healthcare issues/stressors and selected one for further review. For this Assignment, you will consider in more detail the healthcare issue/stressor you selected. You will also review research that addresses the issue/stressor and write a white paper to your organization’s leadership that addresses the issue/stressor you selected.

To Prepare:

• Review the national healthcare issues/stressors presented in the Resources and reflect on the national healthcare issue/stressor you selected for study.
• Reflect on the feedback you received from your colleagues on your Discussion post for the national healthcare issue/stressor you selected.
• Identify and review two additional scholarly resources (not included in the Resources for this module) that focus on change strategies implemented by healthcare organizations to address your selected national healthcare issue/stressor.

The Assignment (3-4 Pages):

Analysis of a Pertinent Healthcare Issue

Develop a 3- to 4-page paper, written to your organization’s leadership team, addressing your selected national healthcare issue/stressor and how it is impacting your work setting. Be sure to address the following:

• Describe the national healthcare issue/stressor you selected and its impact on your organization. Use organizational data to quantify the impact (if necessary, seek assistance from leadership or appropriate stakeholders in your organization).
• Provide a brief summary of the two articles you reviewed from outside resources on the national healthcare issue/stressor. Explain how the healthcare issue/stressor is being addressed in other organizations.
• Summarize the strategies used to address the organizational impact of national healthcare issues/stressors presented in the scholarly resources you selected. Explain how they may impact your organization both positively and negatively. Be specific and provide examples.

1. In class we wrote a MapReduce program in Java to compute the word counts for any given input. In this assignment, you will repeat solving the same problem but using Hadoop streaming. 

2. Create two scripts in Python namely wordcount_map.py and wordcount_reduce.py to be used by the mappers and reducers of the streaming job. 

3. Your script files must be executable (consider chmod command), and must include the necessary shebang (like in the attached script files).

 4. Attached are the script files we used in class to demonstrate Hadoop streaming, namely: maxtemp_map.py and maxtemp_reduce.py. They can help you to get started. 

5. Recall the streaming command:

 $ mapred streaming    

 -files <executable_map>,<executable_reduce>   

  -mapper <executable_map>    

 -reducer <executable_reduce>   

  -input <input-path>    

 -output <output-path> 

(extra options: -combiner, -numReduceTasks, etc.)

MaxTemperature Example file is the program file discussed in Class.