BUSI 311 Week 1 Discussion Board Forum 1 Example

Discussion Board Forum 1: The Work of a Health Care Manager

BUSI 311 Introduction to Healthcare Administration, Discussion Board Forum 1

Thread by [Student Name]

The practice, its figures and the classmates are composites; the textbook, Scripture and the peer-reviewed articles cited are real.

Last spring, our six-physician internal medicine practice had more than 140 prior authorization requests waiting at once. Patients waited up to two weeks for medications and imaging their physicians had already ordered, and our medical assistants were spending afternoons on hold with insurers instead of rooming patients. When I became practice manager, this was the first problem on my desk, and it taught me what Buchbinder and Shanks (2017) mean when they describe management as coordinating people and resources to reach an organization's goals. Nobody in the practice was doing anything wrong; the work simply had no owner, no standard and no measure, which is exactly the gap a manager exists to fill.

The chapter's classic management functions gave me a framework. Planning meant deciding what success looked like: every request submitted within two business days. Organizing meant moving the work from seven assistants who each handled a few requests into a single small team. Staffing meant choosing two experienced staff members and training them on each insurer's rules. Directing meant explaining the change to physicians and assistants and protecting the team's time. Controlling meant tracking turnaround every week and reporting it at our staff meeting. The functions overlapped constantly. When one insurer changed its forms, the plan, the training and the measures all had to change together, which showed me that management is less a sequence of steps than a cycle the manager keeps turning.

There was evidence for this approach. Schaffer et al. (2026) described a Veterans Affairs network that centralized prior authorization for four health systems. Before the change, 161 clinical staff handled about 10,900 requests in six months; afterward, six specialists handled a similar number, completion within 96 hours rose from 95% to 98% and local pharmacists gained 3,100 hours for patient care. The stakes are not only administrative. Lee et al. (2026) argue that delaying indicated care does not reduce cost; it shifts the cost to patients through prolonged symptoms, lost work and stress.

Within three months, our backlog fell below 20 and average turnaround dropped to two days. Paul's call for everything in the church to be done in a fitting and orderly way (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, 1 Corinthians 14:40) describes much of a manager's work. Management is invisible when it works: patients simply get their medicine on time.

Reply to Danielle

Danielle, you wrote that the most important part of a manager's job is keeping good people, and that your clinic lost three nurses in a year. I agree, and the numbers support you. Your experience fits the research. Abraham-Aggarwal et al. (2026) estimated that replacing a single physician faculty member costs from about 60% to 78% of annual salary once recruitment, vacancy and the first year's lower productivity are counted. Clinical staff turnover is less expensive per person but far more frequent, so the total can be large for a small clinic. Cerri et al. (2026) surveyed clinicians and health care leaders and found gaps between clinicians' motivation to lead and the support their organizations provided, such as protected time and shared decision-making, and those gaps were associated with stress and burnout. A manager who closes those gaps may keep people who would otherwise leave. In practical terms, that might mean giving a senior nurse a say in scheduling, protecting time for training or simply asking staff what slows them down and then fixing it. These steps cost far less than recruiting replacements, and they tell employees that the organization notices their work.

Jesus described the good shepherd as one who calls each of his sheep by name (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, John 10:3). For a manager, knowing staff well enough to notice when someone is struggling may be the most effective retention tool available. Did your clinic hold exit interviews with the nurses who left, and did their reasons point to something a manager could change, such as schedules, workload or recognition?

Reply to Andre

Andre, you suggested that artificial intelligence could solve prior authorization delays entirely. It may help a great deal, and our practice is watching the tools closely, but I would be cautious about the word entirely. Valedon Navarro and Reise (2026) propose a model in which an AI system handles routine data extraction and submission while routing complex cases to pharmacists, warning that systems without clinical oversight raise concerns about transparency, bias and inappropriate denials. Zeitouni et al. (2026) describe how AI transcription tools already reduce documentation burden in practices, but note that the deepest benefits require integration with the electronic record and significant training. In both cases, the technology changes the manager's job rather than eliminating it: someone still has to choose the tool, design the workflow and monitor the results. There are also new questions for managers, such as who is accountable when an automated submission contains an error, how patient information is protected and whether staff trust the tool enough to stop double-checking every case by hand. Answering those questions is management work, and it takes time and judgment that no software provides.

Proverbs teaches that the prudent person gives thought to his steps (English Standard Version Bible, 2001/2016, Proverbs 14:15). A prudent manager would pilot AI on routine requests, measure accuracy against staff results for a few months and keep human review for anything complex or unusual. Has your organization tested any AI tools yet, and who is responsible for checking their output before it reaches an insurer or a patient's chart?

References

Abraham-Aggarwal, K., Spertus, D., Sheth, A., McCarthy, J., Parajon, D. C., & Kacker, A. (2026). Cost of turnover in academic otolaryngology departments. Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1002/ohn.70480

Buchbinder, S. B., & Shanks, N. H. (2017). Introduction to health care management (3rd ed.). Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Cerri, A., Zanardo, M., Lega, F., Bottinelli, E., Menicanti, L., Biondi-Zoccai, G. V., & Biondi-Zoccai, G. (2026). Medical leadership between motivation and organisational support: Findings from a contemporary survey. Leadership in Health Services. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1108/LHS-02-2026-0032

English Standard Version Bible. (2016). Crossway. (Original work published 2001)

Lee, M. Y., Mazmudar, A. S., Rajput, R., Kurup, S., Yettapu, D., Park, D. K., & Singh, K. (2026). Denying and delaying indicated care: The true cost. Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.2106/JBJS.26.01049

Schaffer, K., Patel, A., Andrews, C., Beck, N., Tatter, J., Agnew, M., Nation, T., Marin, J., Pressley, B., & Taylo, J. (2026). Implementation and workload impact of a Veterans Integrated Service Network (VISN) centralized prior authorization program. American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1093/ajhp/zxag308

Valedon Navarro, J. A., & Reise, R. (2026). A pharmacist-overseen, artificial intelligence-enabled model for provider-side prior authorization: From burden to opportunity (PAVE-1). Journal of Managed Care & Specialty Pharmacy, 32(9), 1114-1121. https://doi.org/10.18553/jmcp.2026.32.9.1114

Zeitouni, F., Botros, N. E., Khosla, A. S., McKinney, M., Craig, J. N., Alamo-Irizarry, L., & Rao, V. K. (2026). Charting tomorrow: A practical review of artificial intelligence in medical documentation. Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery Global Open, 14(6), e7822. https://doi.org/10.1097/GOX.0000000000007822