This course has focused on the development of healthcare administrators who are poised to deal with not only current issues in the healthcare arena, but also to develop visionary leaders who can handle future issues in healthcare administration. This final paper requires a comparative analysis of multiple hospital or health systems in their applicability as it relates to various issues encountered by the healthcare administrator.
▫ Access the following website: WhyNotTheBest.org. This site was created and is maintained by The Commonwealth Fund, which is a private foundation focused on development of high performance health systems. It is a free resource for health care professionals interested in tracking performance on various measures of health care quality. It is used by organizations to compare their performance against peers and competitors on a range of benchmarks over various periods of time. The link for the site is: (http://www.whynotthebest.org/)
▫ Select a minimum of 3 hospitals (from the left menu box – “Compare Hospitals”) in your home state and at 3 hospitals in least 2-3 other states in order to make comparisons. It is recommended that your choice of the other 2-3 states be states that have similar characteristics (i.e. demographics or population) as your home state. Your selections are not required to be neighboring states.
▫ Once the list appears based on your selected state (under the matching hospitals menu), click on the arrow icon next to the hospital to add them to the box on the right (“add to report”). Do not leave this page until all of your hospitals and states have been selected. Your choices will not be saved. Look back to the left menu box and select your next state and hospitals until all of your choices have been selected.
▫ Once all selections have been made, click on “View Report”. You must click on the site terms of agreement in order to proceed. You will also need to give your report a name. Any name will suffice. Click on “View Report” again. You may get a popup menu that asks again for the agreement to the terms of use. Please read this information. It also illustrates how to cite your report. You will need this citation information for the reference page of your report.
▫ Your report will be displayed. Click on the “change category” link in order to produce reports on the following characteristics.
▬ Overall Recommended Care
▬ Mortality Rates
▬ Readmission Rates
▬ HIT Adoption
▫ It is recommended that you print the chart reports from each category. If you desire, you can create a free account to save your reports. However, if you do not create the account before you do the report, you will lose your report. It may be more feasible just to print out your reports.
▫ If you select hospitals that do not have enough to measure the four required characteristics, it is advised that you select other hospitals. The purpose of the assignment is to compare facilities.
▫ After reviewing the reports from each state, students will develop a comparative analysis paper. The paper will explore the four required areas of comparison; describe the findings, and present ideas for improving the data findings. The body of the paper should be between a minimum of 8 pages not to exceed 12 pages, typed and double-spaced in Times Roman font using APA standard. The page length requirement does not include the title page and reference pages.
Suggested format for the paper:

•  Title page
•  Introduction – This section of the paper should describe the states selected and rationale for their selection.
•  Comparative Analysis – This discussion should give a narrative of the results of the comparisons for each state based on the specified characteristics.
•  Reflections – Discuss your personal and professional reflections on the findings. (What do you think about the results? How might you explain any differences?) This discussion should be supported by references from the assigned readings and external sources.
•  Conclusions – Discuss how the selected hospitals might improve their scores on each of the characteristics. This discussion should be based on concepts and principles learned from the MHA 608 course.
•  Christian Worldview – This section of the paper should also address how your Christian worldview perspective impacts or frames your ideas and discussions related to the issues presented in the paper.
•  Reference page – APA format