Important note regarding Individual Projects in Units 1-5: This course uses a series of progressive Individual Projects in which you will focus on a real world and publicly-held health care organization.

You are encouraged to use caution when selecting the organization that you intend to study in the Unit 1 Individual Project because it will be used in all Unit assignments in this course.

You should review all five Individual Project assignments to understand the nature of the projects, the information requirements, the research required, and the expectations. Please make sure that the organization that you select is publicly-held and therefore has information that is readily available to the public. This is essential to your ability to complete all assignments.

If you are uncertain about the suitability of organizations for these assignments, please speak directly with your faculty member before commencing work on this assignment.

You hired as the Director of Operations Director for a publicly-held hospital chain. You have been asked to evaluate the organization's strategic planning approach because of changes in recent legislation (Affordable Care Act, Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH), Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), the Joint Commission, etc.).

To gather data for your assignment, identify a publicly-held health care organization of your choice. You may use the Library to search for market information.

Prepare a report of 4 ages with at least 5 academic or professional references published in the past five years that indicates the following:

Identify all of the stakeholders that are involved and impacted by the organization.

Differentiate internal from external stakeholders, and evaluate the relationship between the organizational mission and vision for each stakeholder group based on strategic planning components.

Evaluate at least 3 business units or stakeholder groups that should be subjected to further evaluation to support the strategic initiatives of the organization, and provide your rationale and justification.

Analyze the mission and vision statements of the organization from the perspective of each of the identified stakeholders.

Assess the organization's approach to addressing recent health care legislation, and provide an evaluation of the strategic response that is commonly employed.