Organisational Development and Change: VA Healthcare Analysis

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the organisational development and change initiatives undertaken by Veterans Affairs (VA) Healthcare, specifically focusing on the reduction of opioid use among veterans. The report examines the introduction of changes to minimize opioid prescriptions, addressing the issues of addiction and adverse health effects associated with long-term opioid use. It highlights the positive impact of these changes, including improved patient outcomes and increased awareness of safe opioid practices. A key aspect of the analysis is the partnership between VA and Cigna, a public-private collaboration aimed at supporting veterans with chronic pain and reducing opioid dependency. The report explores the effects of this partnership, including educational programs, new pain management techniques, and the implementation of the Opioid Safety Initiative. It also assesses the impact on various stakeholders, such as healthcare organizations, law enforcement agencies, and community groups, while discussing the challenges and resistance encountered during the implementation of these changes. Overall, the report emphasizes the positive outcomes of the changes, the cooperation between VA and Cigna, and the importance of sustainable development in healthcare to improve the welfare of the community.

RUNNING HEAD: Organisational Development and Change
Veterans Affairs Health Care, America
Organizational Development and Change

Organisational Development and Change
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Introduction
Veterans Health Affairs is United States component of the federal-cabinet level agency
Veterans Affairs that comes in the jurisdiction of US federal government. Agency is
headquartered at Washington, D.C. US established in 1865. VHA is designed to provide the
health care services and guidance with the health facilities (Coll & Eugenia, 2016). This
organisation has recently introduced a change related to the minimising the use of opioid in
the patient treatment, patient facing the high pain in their body normally prescribed for the
opioid because this medicine is very effective to reduce the severe pain in the body, but from
the recent record agency found guilty to prescribing opioid to huge patients and causing
obesity and abusing for the salt in patients, and also patients were becoming addicted for this
treatment. Agency found the excess use of the opioid causing serious death for the patient
(Haight, Ko, Tong, Bohm, & Callaghan, 2018).
Impact of the change
The change introduced in the VA was positively accepted by the members and staff
members, because rate of opioid use was causing negative health issues and even death to the
patients and this was a serious issue for the concern. Issues faced by the veterans are chronic
pain with high density including Joint Pain, Back Pain, Neck Pain, Migraine and sometimes
Jaw Pain (Kent, 2019). But the measure risk identified in the veterans was their addiction
towards the medicine; hence system of the VA was updated to read the patient’s history about
the pain density and their abuse opioid on the prescriptions. Hence the positive side of this
change was positive response from the organisation members and that is the meaningful
achievement for any change and development.VA of health affaires has taken an effective
step of partnership with Cigna to support the change or prevention of use and abuse of opioid
for the chronic pain in the veterans. This is a public and private partnership and aimed to help
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the habitual patients to reduce the use of opioid to overcome the issues of chronic pain
regularly. The first aim of this partnership is to guide the Veterans and their about the
excessive use of opioid and its side-effects on their health (Reinfrow, 2019).
VA and Cigna has introduced the adaption of new techniques to reduce the chronic pain
issues in the patients and management has facilitated the clinical team with a toolkit, Opioid
Safety Initiatives to help the patients facing the severe chronic pain. Moreover, VA providers
are advised to take regular part in the state prescription-drug monitoring programs and camp
to help the struggle against the opioid issues (Rosenblatt, Andrilla, Catlin, & Larson, 2015).
When Cigna and VA started the partnership, their first goal was to decline the rate of
prescription and recommendation for the opioids to patients. After the reduction of
prescriptions of opioid overdoses, Cigna took its next step by attracting the community
service groups and other customers to participate in their plan to aware the veterans to live
with safe life and healthy living (Kent, 2019).
Effect on stakeholders
Role of stakeholders are very important in the organisational change, because they are
directly affected with the steps taken by the management for the change. VA has introduced
the reduction of Opioid use for the patients this decision put great impact over the
stakeholders. List of stakeholders who get affected by this step include, health care
organisations, Law enforcement agencies, community organisations and local health care
organisations. Initially the step was resisted by the stakeholders on the basis of the
unavailability of the similar effective option to relief the patient from the severe pain
(Bickenbach, 2017). This resistance was only possible to be solved by introducing the
effective resources to reduce the abuse of opioid and also provide clinical staff with updated
system and tools to treat the patients with proper care and appropriate prescriptions. Other
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issue raised by the stakeholders was about the decision of public and private partnership
between the VA and Cigna, this step initially created confusion they resisted the step. Law
enforcement agencies resisted this step, hence to deal the issues both organisations
announced their motive to secure the health benefits of the members of veterans’ agency and
give them proper follow up regarding their health (Elsemore, 2017).
Overall impact of the change
VA and Cigna both are engaged in the health care providing facilities and services, hence the
impact of this step they introduced in the health care department was very effective and
devoted to achieve the target of the healthier society. US health centres deal many serious
injuries and operations every year, to reduce the pain normally they used to prescribe the use
of opioid in case of severe chronic pain (Jones, 2013). Seeing the negative impact over the
health of patients, this step was important to issue the guidelines for the clinical staff. These
guidelines resulted the very positive impact in the scenario like, clinical staff started using
other means to reduce the pain in body, people who thoughts the other medicine was
unaffordable were guided with the exercise and activities to get the long term relief in cheap
rate from their pain, and most importantly rate of abuse of the opioid was rapidly decreased
and also the ratio of sudden death due to overdose of opioid is decreased. Moreover
stakeholders also started promoting the guidelines and they also contributed towards the
effective implementation of the change in the environment (Rosenblatt, Andrilla, Catlin, &
Larson, 2015).
Opinion about the change
The present scenario of every organisation is devoted to make the sustainable development
and take the effective change that facilitates the community because the community is the
factor that affects the organisation very deep. In case of the health organisation,
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responsibilities of the organisation becomes little high because society accept them to took
effective steps for the welfare and development of the health, hence the step taken by the
Veterans health agency to reduce the use and abuse of the opioid in the patients to fight the
chronic pain is very big achievement that they have introduced with the great struggle (Gold,
2019). As seen in the past scenario, patients were habitual to use the opioid to reduce the
density of chronic pain immediately, but this was causing them other health issues, and
overdose of opioid was giving result of the increased death rate. This step was expected to be
taken with the effective changes and they did it well with doing partnership with Cigna, both
performed their duties in their area and this was very important to lead the change with the
identification of replacement (Kwasnicka, 2016).
Opioid is the immediate relieving medicine used commonly but causing the lever and sudden
death issues, this is a critical situation for the clinical members who are hired to cure the
patient with the responsibility of their complete safety. To deal the challenge of overdose of
the medicine both partners can use the cooperation of law enforcement agencies to make the
amendments in the laws restricting the health organisation to reduce the prescription of
opioid. All the community helping organisation can be asked to put their efforts (Coll &
Eugenia, 2016). VA has introduced the updated system of the patient history of using the
opioid they can update it by setting the limit of dose to be given to patients. Strict guidelines
and proper training can help the clinical staff to identify the negative impact and provide the
immediate cure to the suffering person (Reinfrow, 2019).
Conclusion
This essay has identified the impact of the change introduced by the Veterans Health Affairs
Agency, in the area of patient safety and development. This is an impressive and guiding step
that can set the examples to the other health organisations. This step was to reduce the
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overdose and its negative impact in the Veterans members and other patients. Hence this step
was fully targeted to aware the normal people about the side-effects caused by the use of
opioid in case of severe pain in high doses. Both partners, Cigna and VA are performing their
duties with the effective implication of change strategies and the best part for them is the
cooperation they get from their clinical staff.
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