| Course | DDBA 8561 Seminar in Managing Healthcare Delivery Systems |
|---|---|
| Week | Week 7 |
| Paper type | Information brief |
| Length | About 540 words, 4 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Walden University |
| Program | Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for DDBA 8561 Week 7
The Fact That Arrives After It Is Needed: An Information Brief on Bed Placement at a Community Hospital, Using Galbraith's Four Design Strategies to Show Which Ones the Hospital Drifted Into and Arguing for a Cheaper One
Student Name
Walden University
DDBA 8561: Seminar in Managing Healthcare Delivery Systems
Instructor Name
Month Day, Year
The Fact That Arrives After It Is Needed: An Information Brief on Bed Placement at a Community Hospital, Using Galbraith's Four Design Strategies to Show Which Ones the Hospital Drifted Into and Arguing for a Cheaper One
The Missing Fact
To place an admitted patient from the emergency department, bed placement staff at a composite 310-bed hospital in North Carolina need one fact above all: the expected discharge time of each occupied bed. They need it by about 10:00 a.m. to plan the afternoon's admissions. They typically receive it after 2:00 p.m., when hospitalists finish rounds and write discharge orders. Until then, placement staff know which beds are empty but not which will empty, so they assign beds only as discharges are confirmed, and emergency department boarders wait.
The Routing Decision
The placement decision depends on four inputs: bed census, which is current in the electronic record; patient needs such as isolation or telemetry, which arrive with the admission request; nursing staffing by unit, which is set at the start of each shift; and expected discharge times, which arrive late. Only the last is missing when it matters.
Galbraith's Strategies
Galbraith (1974) argued that the less predictable a job is, the more an organization must learn and decide in the middle of doing it, and he sorted the possible responses into four design strategies. Two reduce the need for information processing: creating slack resources and creating self-contained tasks. Two increase the capacity to process information: investing in vertical information systems and creating lateral relations.
Slack resources, here, means holding empty beds or letting patients board, so that placement does not depend on knowing discharge times. The hospital has drifted into this strategy without choosing it: boarding of about five hours is a form of slack, paid for by emergency department patients and staff.
Self-contained tasks would mean dedicating beds to the emergency department's admissions, such as an admission unit, so placement does not need to coordinate with every inpatient unit. That requires space and staff the hospital does not have.
Vertical information systems would mean a real-time bed management platform predicting discharges from data. The hospital is evaluating one at about $400,000 a year. It would help only if the data it uses, discharge orders, arrive earlier, which they do not.
Lateral relations would mean direct contact between the people who know and the people who need to know. A 9:30 a.m. huddle on each unit, where the charge nurse and hospitalist agree on expected discharges and enter them as a field in the record, would deliver the missing fact by mid-morning.
Recommendation
The hospital should choose lateral relations: a daily mid-morning discharge huddle on each medical and surgical unit, with expected discharge times entered by 10:00 a.m. The cost is about fifteen minutes of a hospitalist's and a charge nurse's time per unit per day. Thompson (1967) argued that interdependent units coordinate best through mutual adjustment when their work cannot be fully specified in advance, and Gittell (2002) found that relational coordination improves performance when conditions are uncertain. The huddle applies both.
Limits
Expected discharge times will sometimes be wrong; placement staff will need to treat them as estimates. The brief has not measured how often hospitalists would agree to an estimate by 9:30.
References
Galbraith, J. R. (1974). Organization design: An information processing view. Interfaces, 4(3), 28-36. https://doi.org/10.1287/inte.4.3.28
Gittell, J. H. (2002). Coordinating mechanisms in care provider groups: Relational coordination as a mediator and input uncertainty as a moderator of performance effects. Management Science, 48(11), 1408-1426. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.48.11.1408.268
Thompson, J. D. (1967). Organizations in action. McGraw-Hill.
What the DDBA 8561 Week 7 instructions ask for
Week 7 asks for a brief on one coordination problem framed as missing information. Name the specific input that arrives too late and say when it is needed and when it arrives. Show the decision it feeds and the other inputs, noting which are current. Apply an information-processing framework, describing each strategy as it would look in your organization instead of reciting textbook definitions. Identify which strategies the organization already uses, by choice or by drift, and what each costs. Recommend the cheapest strategy that would deliver the missing input in time, with its cost, and state what you have not measured. Four pages and one diagram showing the routing decision and its inputs are enough.
How this DDBA 8561 Week 7 example is built
The sample's opening names expected discharge time as the missing fact. A section lists four inputs to placement: bed census, patient needs, unit staffing and expected discharges, only the last arriving late. The framework section describes slack as empty beds or boarding, self-contained tasks as a dedicated admission unit the hospital lacks space for, vertical systems as a predictive platform that would still wait for afternoon orders and lateral relations as a charge nurse and hospitalist agreeing on discharges mid-morning. The recommendation costs about fifteen minutes of two people's time per unit per day. Limits note that estimates will sometimes be wrong. The brief connects the huddle to research on mutual adjustment between interdependent units and on coordination under uncertainty.
Where the marks sit in the DDBA 8561 Week 7 rubric
An information brief is rewarded above all for isolating what the system lacks. A brief surveying bed management technologies and recommending the most capable one has answered a procurement question, and the analysis row rewards it modestly. Credit gathers where a specific missing input is named and timed, since that turns a coordination problem into something a manager can design around. The framework earns marks when all four strategies are applied to the case. Identifying a strategy adopted by drift, such as boarding as slack, shows insight. A recommendation weighed by cost against alternatives completes the brief. Honest limits, such as how often estimates will be wrong, show the recommendation has been tested against reality.
Common DDBA 8561 Week 7 mistakes, and how to avoid them
Watch the decision being made, or interview the people who make it, and ask what they wish they knew earlier. Write down when each input becomes available. Read Galbraith's short article and apply each strategy concretely. Look for strategies the organization uses without having chosen them; slack often appears as waiting. Compare costs honestly, including staff time. Prefer remedies that change when information is produced over those that only display it faster. Keep the brief to four pages. A short diagram of the decision, with the late input highlighted, helps readers see the problem at once.
Get a DDBA 8561 Week 7 example written to your instructions
Send the prompt Week 7 sets, the rubric, and the routing decision your section is concerned with, beds, appointments or transfers, and an information brief built on Galbraith's framework comes back inside 24 to 48 hours, the first without charge. Vendor names stay out unless your prompt requires a product comparison.
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DDBA 8561 Week 7 questions, answered
Where can I find a free DDBA 8561 Week 7 sample paper?
Ridgeway's missing-fact brief on bed placement is published here whole, and reading it is free.
What fact is missing in the DDBA 8561 Week 7 brief?
The expected discharge time of each occupied bed, needed by mid-morning but known only in the afternoon.
Which strategy has the hospital drifted into?
Slack resources, in the form of about five hours of emergency department boarding.
Why not buy a bed management platform?
It costs about $400,000 a year and would still depend on discharge orders that arrive late.
What does the brief recommend?
A 9:30 a.m. huddle on each unit where the charge nurse and hospitalist enter expected discharges.