Organizational Analysis

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End-Stage Renal Disease occurs when a person’s kidneys have little or no residual function. In order to remain alive, the individual with End-Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) must either receive a life-sustaining course of dialysis to clean the toxins from the blood, a function the kidneys usually perform, or he or she must receive a kidney transplant.

Dialysis is distinctive in the history of healthcare in the United States. When dialysis first began in the 1960s, the therapy had to be rationed. Although the machines that cleaned the blood were miraculous at the time, the machines that were available to do so were in limited supply and the process was extremely expensive. As a result, life and death committees, composed of regular citizens, had to be formed and the therapy rationed. Then in the 1970s, in a dramatic testimony before Congress, a patient underwent a dialysis treatment on the floor of the Senate. After the testimony, Congress created a special entitlement to pay for it, and dialysis became our country's first experiment in universal healthcare.

The ESRD Amendments to the Social Security Act of 1972 contained language for the establishment of a structure of “End-Stage Renal Disease Network Councils” to assist the entity now known as the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in the monitoring of the quality of care given to the ESRD patients by providers of dialysis services and transplantation (2008 Annual Report, 2009).

I work for one of these “End-Stage Renal Disease Network Councils,” ESRD Network #15. We are a federally mandated, nonprofit Colorado corporation that contracts with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), to facilitate the improvement in the quality of care for those with E...

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...have two separate Data Managers in two offices, we should consolidate the management to Network #15 in order to save costs. She agreed, and as part of my portfolio project, I will be outlining the organizational redesign that we are currently undergoing. We have little control over the amount of money or the contract that we have with CMS, but we can control how use our internal resources. Because the environment in which we operate is so highly unstable, this is how we can exert the little control that we do have. I will be traveling to California next week to meet with my counterpart and strategize ways we can make our resources go even further.

Works Cited

2008 Annual Report (2009). Intermountain End Stage Renal Disease Network, Inc. Denver, CO.

Jones, G. R. (2010). Organizational Theory, Design, and Change. 6th Ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall

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