Scenario: In your role as a policy analyst for a regional health system, which encompasses a hospital, a long-term care facility, and physician practice groups, you’re undoubtedly aware of the policy challenges your health system currently faces. Your CEO has entrusted you with the task of pinpointing the most critical policy challenge that stands to significantly impact your health system.
Once you have identified the policy, your next steps involve thoroughly researching this policy’s potential impact and challenges. The CEO requests that you present your analysis in a memo that provides an encompassing policy overview, outlines the identified impact and challenges, and offers thoughtful recommendations for effective resolution. Your insights and recommendations will play a pivotal role in navigating these challenges successfully.
Write a 3- to 5-page memo to the scenario’s CEO on the health policy that you identified as the most critical to your health care system. Your memo must include all of the following parts:
Header/Subject: Specify the recipient’s name and title or affiliation along with the name of the memorandum author (you, a policy analyst for your health system). In less than one sentence, the subject of the memorandum should concisely summarize your content and policy recommendation to advance the health system’s policy goal.
TO: [RECIPIENT’S NAME, TITLE]
FROM: [YOUR NAME], Policy Analyst
DATE: [CURRENT DATE]
SUBJECT: [DESCRIPTIVE SUBJECT]
Executive Summary: This section provides a brief overview of the identified policy, the possible impact and challenges, your recommendations, and the reasoning behind supporting the selected policy. Ensure that the initial sentence of this paragraph explicitly communicates your recommendation for the CEO to pursue the specified policy.
Important:
Remember that this section is likely to be the primary focus for your CEO and, in most cases, the only section they read.
The justifications presented here preview the comprehensive discussion you will provide in the concluding paragraph of the “Recommendation” section.
Background and Problem Definition: This section includes the following information:
The relevant policy issue
The current policy and/or implementation issues most relevant to the policy issue at hand
The problem(s) with the current policy and/or its implementation
Others’ proposed policy recommendations or solutions to the problem
The crux of the debate among the proposed solutions
You may draw some of this information from your stakeholder analysis narrative, but you may have changed your view or added something since then.
This problem definition should demonstrate the seriousness and significance of the problem. In other words, why is this an important and urgent problem?
Criteria: This section describes the criteria (generally 3, no more than 4) with which you will evaluate your recommendations. You can use the criteria described in Craft and Fulong’s Selected Criteria for Evaluating Public Policy Proposals.
Recommendations: This section explains your three policy recommendations and identifies the alternative you recommend. In this section, you must include these elements:
A summary of the client’s policy goal
A brief listing of the content of three policy alternatives (one of which is the status quo)
The one policy alternative you recommend your client pursue among those three alternatives
A statement of the policy alternative (in the first sentence)
The specific content of the policy
The level of government
The policymaking venue (in two or three sentences)
Explanation of how the policy recommendation would advance your client’s policy goal (in the concluding sentence)
Evaluation: The last section of your memo must evaluate the policy alternatives against the criteria (if you have not done so in the previous section) and a rationale for why you recommended that policy. You are expected to cite sources while providing evidence in support/critique of each policy recommendation. In any event, you must clearly evaluate all policy alternatives against the criteria to show the basis for your ultimate policy recommendation.
