Suppose you are to specify a short-run producti

Answer the following questions with college level writing (350 min). NO APA BUT be sure to explain and include 2 references. TURNITIN

1. Suppose you are to specify a short-run production function for dental services. What inputs might you include in the production function? Which would be variable inputs and which are fixed inputs?

2. In your own words, explain the law of diminishing marginal productivity. Be sure to mention why the law tends to hold in the short run.

3. What factors shift the short-run average variable and total cost curves? Explain why each curve would shift up or down in response to changes in these factors.

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Unit 9 Round Table Article Assignment

Round Table Discussions

The round table discussions are meant to give you an opportunity to explore forensic  cases past and present that bring to light various investigative techniques. You will choose a case from either newspapers, digital media, criminal justice journals and organizations. The New York Times, The Innocence Project and Science Direct are a few examples of resources.

Once you locate an article , highlight the investigative components of the cases. Then provide your thoughts about the cases. Finally, make sure as with all of your discussions provide references.

Each round table article should be between 400-500 words (approximately 2 pages double spaced). These articles are not required every week, so pay attention to the due dates. I think you will be pleasantly surprised how these cases were solved. The innocence project will especially evoke a great deal of conversation. Students often find this one of the most rewarding part of the course even though it's a writing assignment.

If you need any help either getting started with the articles or writing, please email me. I am here to help.

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Making this up, there's, uh, a youth organization that does really great. Job development work and the boys and Girls Club of Worcester doesn't do great on making this up. Doesn't do great job development work, so the organization that is small is failing financially, but they have great programs that might make sense if possibly talk about merging or being an alliance because it's value added for the organization that is financially. Strong. Does that make sense? But you, you, you you need to make sure you've really done a financial scan and organizational scan. Have a good understanding from their constituents, from their team members about the strengths of that other organization and the challenges 'cause all nonprofits, all all for profits, all have challenges to before you enter into anything, so I think. That can be something that could pull if someone is organization is really struggling financially. It could actually hurt your organization if you take them on 'cause you had to still raise money for them. Does that make sense? So. I think it to look at all of that. It's not as easy as it's being like, wow, they do good work. We do good work. We should merge. You know, you have to be careful because it could actually hold you back. For sure. You know, I think. Um. And I think you also have seen how? Well, some of these big companies for profit companies. UM, the bigger you get, sometimes you lose that local feel. And that you don't actually know the communities that you're serving and that I think is very devastating for your community if you're no longer really about your community. So I think you have to be careful with that too. You still wanna make sure that even if it helps you financially to merge with a company that you're still able to. Make sure that your communities that you're serving feel like that there your top priority, and I think it can't be just based on finances, but also if you grow too big. I think there can be that concern that you lose that. Personal feel that I think we all like having that we all want to feel like we know people at that organization that we can go to. We don't want like this one 800 number you know, so I think. You have to make sure that when you merge that you're still able to provide the services and the communication that your constituents that the people you serve, the community you work with are used to, and if anything, it might be an opportunity for you to even improve communication. But something else I've learned is it's so important to make sure that your board of directors is communicating. Any of these type of decisions, not just with the executive director CEO's involved with it completely as partners with the board, but you need to make sure that your management team, that all of your team members are aware and you might not be able to tell them everything right away. Certainly if you're just saying we're having talks that doesn't, but it. Once you think this is gonna happen, you wanna make sure that your team members know what's going on, that they're able to provide you with feedback that they're able to talk about what they're worried about, what they're excited about, or whatever. I think you're gonna fail. I really think you could fail. You know, I think to be very careful with that and again. Decisions have to be made and often by the Board of Directors and the CEO, but those decisions should also be made by getting input and feedback from the people you serve and from your team members. You're not an organization without the team members. You're not an organization without the people you serve, so they best be involved. Any questions on that? I have a question, yes. You were talking about code. Doesn't make sense. Silly merge with someone who's going under, and I thought a lot about the Clark Becker type of merger. And Mike Becker was already like, completely broke and then took some of their programs like that. Common in institutions and have, like large endowments and like, but they also had programs Clark wanted. And remember, I talked about that, that that sometimes if they have something that you think will benefit your students, for example, for this, that makes sense. Becker has some wonderful buildings. So there were some positive, certainly out of that. Yes, Becker was struggling. Certainly a lot of small colleges, a lot of small nonprofits can struggle in this environment, for sure. But Becker still had some strengths. For sure, that was a really good question 'cause. It was very topical. What's happened here for sure. and we' and it's not. It's not typical, I guess sort of back in the day, it wasn't as difficult as it is today. But I think just being transparent really results in incredible. Add an increased level of trust. And motivation for our employees and our team members so. I built a culture at the organization that is very transparent. I think. Uh, clearly another category, another quality as a a leader is empathy, especially nowadays. Being apathetic, I I spent an hour. With a colleague today, one of my Vice President, she came in and said I hope you don't have a lot of questions for me today. And um. I thought, well, do I always ask her a lot of questions? I probably do. But she clearly didn't. She wasn't in the space where she she wanted to talk about what was going on in her life. And what was happening with her? Her at work? And so we had a great we we talked for an hour. Just supporting some of the challenges she has at home with her son, unfortunately. And me just being there for her was what she needed. It was the most important thing I I think that we could have done today in our work. She needed a lot of my empathy, for sure. This is making mistakes trying to prevent. I tell myself all the time that we really we we have to expect there without fail. We have to look forward to it and we have to learn from it. Most importantly, we have to learn from it. So. I spent a lot of my time just coming back. I'm worried. What's the worst thing that could happen? On the one hand, the worst thing that could happen is someone could die like we do not want that, or someone could get hurt. We don't want those things to happen, but most of the decisions that our organization have, something are not directly related to client safety. And so what's the worst thing that can happen? We'll learn and we'll get through it. And so freeing people up to make decisions is really critical. This idea about growth. It's one of the core values in our organization is that everyone can grow. Everyone should grow. Personal growth is incredibly important, and again for me it's an important. Thing that keeps me moving as well. And I mentioned innovation. It's also something I really love to do. So I think in terms of leadership, we are. I forget which of the business gurus said we're over managed and under LED. And I think. I think that's very true. I think we we often know how to fix things. We know how to keep the things running. But in terms of how we actually meet people through change. Through motivation, through communication, removing barriers for folks, I think all of those things. Are important in leadership. So I will pause there before we move onto open sky. If there are any questions that you want to have. Alright. So open Sky is an organization that. You can go right to the next slide list. Our mission is blending best practices with the power of community. We partnered with individuals and families to see beyond. And live beyond those perceived limitations, right? That's underdog. You can't do this. You can't do that. We help people see beyond those to pursue fulfilling lives. That's our mission statement at open Sky. We are really proud. We spent the year going through the organization, talking to our employees. What is it that we do that helps people lead fulfilling lives? And we lived in three areas. We landed with opportunities. Wellness and relationships. Um that? Opportunities for people are critical opportunities to grow and learn. That Wellness in both physical, mental, social, spiritual. Is incredibly important to helping people lead fulfilling life. And everything starts with a relationship. All of our work, all of our support for individuals and family starts with a relationship with that person or that family. And that's how growth and recovery can occur. Some key facts about our organization we were founded in the 70s. I'll pop a little bit more, quite a bit more about our affiliation. We have about 1200 employees throughout central mass. We have a $90 million, maybe a little bit more, thanks to the federal government, yeah, with an annual revenues we serve about 5000 people a year. Our headquarters is probably only about a mile from here. And we have about 100 programs, our services. One of the things I love about organization is we provide services to people with. Really, the most complex challenges. In our community. And so this creates. A lot of energy and and the organization to help people. Who? Who come to us or who we see with a variety of challenges. But it also presents opportunities for our employees. To gain experience in different areas of Human Services and mental help, and so I wanna go through these. But these are sort of list of the different kinds of folks. Challenges that we help people support. I mentioned that service area. Really deep in central mass. So now I'm gonna talk a little bit about. The landscape a little bit about. Open sky. The landscape we participate in. And our next slide shows. This idea of. The rising cost of health care. Is really driving our focus on. Integration of primary care and medical. And behavioral health. With a care coordination models. And so the people that we support here on the left, we have behavioral health on the left side. Low risk, high risk. We have physical health on the bottom, low risk, high risk. 400 need if you will. And that upper right hand corner quadrant there. People with high behavioral health grades. People with high physical health needs. Are really the folks that that we focus on and. We do so because we're just really good at helping people with chronic and complex issues and the next slide was this point out that. Oh, you go back for one second this 1010%. Generally. Studies have shown about population. And health plans account for about 64% of the spend. Within the healthcare dollar. And. That is a lot of money. And money is critically important. In in our industry. And you know and so. We try to help people at the top of that pyramid there with the most chronic and complex issues. The money is important because. As we'll talk about later. The move in the industry in Health and Human services. Is stored value based care? The term value based care. Delivering. A service or a support? With the hopes that the person or family. We'll lead a fulfilling life. Feel better? Be in recovery, be happy. And that. Ultimately, the insurance companies. Will spend less money. For the care of that person or that family. And so delivering a service or a support. In a way that returns value. It's an important part of where our industry is headed. And our ability. To reduce the spend. For the care of people. Is a major strategic focus of ours. And there actually is a return on investment that we're very interested in and and very much focused on. You don't typically hear human service people talk about return on investment. But here in our organization and in our industry, it is critical to our future. So now some of the. Wonderful assumptions that we've made or assumptions that we made about our wonderful world out there, of course, of pandemic. Incredible war. The civil unrest political division. All of that is. Celebrating, unfortunately, very unfortunately. Our organization is not immune from these. Forces out there and continue to impact us and our market. And one of the things that's happening is consolidation in the market. Which we will talk about in terms of. I I thought I heard you just mentioned. Yeah, I'm seeing it everywhere. I know you are, too. Yeah. Smaller. We're gonna zation. In Human Services, will we're gonna dive into this a lot. So being able to. Embrace. The landscape to seek opportunity is really critical for organizations. And the next slide shows this is a little bit of a sobering a national organization that we belong to surveyed leaders nationally of behavioral health organizations. And just within the last six months, I believe 17% of those organizations think. That they can survive for about a year. Only 32% said that they think they can survive for about two more years. And 39% said they weren't sure they had 12 months worth. Of funding that they would be able to sustain their organization. They just weren't sure so. Leaders of nonprofits, in particular behavioral health community organizations, are very concerned about the future. For all of the reasons, including the demand for services. Well, the rates of payments that we get from health insurance companies and the state. Um. The challenges we have with workforce. Which are not going away anytime soon. Or leading organizations to really. Be concerned about the future. The landscape also is. Telling us that. We need to focus. On the whole person, we need to look at the whole person. Is. Isn't is is an incredible, incredibly important area that we're moving into, not thinking just about the person's mental health. Or. A person's recovery from substances. Or the young adult with autism and just focusing on that, but really looking at the whole person or the whole family. Including the medical, including. There are social determinants which will talk about where they live. Their employment. Transportation all of those things that help help a person Lee to fulfilling life. Virtual care. We have never seen anything like this before. Like, I think that the good, the bad, the ugly with virtual care. But here it is and we are. As an organization and industry, learning how to embrace and use virtual care. In home services. I've had stress through the pandemic, in particular the importance and the need. Increased need for people to receive care in home. Including Human Services. This risk based reimbursement. So we work with insurance companies and state payers. And we say. We think we're gonna, we think we can save you this sensually. We think we can save you this much money. If this family or this person doesn't go to the emergency room. Last year they went ten times. We think they're only gonna go five times if we help them and maybe they won't go at all. Uh, we don't think they're gonna need to go into the hospital because we're gonna help keep them at home. Healthy. Happy, safe. And the insurance company or the state will say you did a great job. You saved us some money while the person got better, while all the family recovered. So we're gonna give you more money. So we're going into these risk based arrangements with our payers. Which is absolutely. Horrible. Scary. It's scary. And the need for the need for financial reserves. The need for our investments to do well in the market. So that we can, whether those financial swings is really critical and this last piece here the pay by there. So we are provider. Insurance companies and other. Venture capital backed firms are becoming pin biters. UMass Medical is starting an insurance company. Right. So they're becoming a payer. They are a provider becoming a pair, but payers like insurance companies are also becoming providers where they're doing the care themselves. And that integration, that vertical integration. Where they can provide the service, pay the bills, reap the benefits, they have it all contained. Um. So that's another really significant. Force in our industry. That is taking place, and I mention these venture back. Google. Amazon back. Franz, there's one that started in the city of Worcester. Called cityblock. And they are. They have their for profit, they have shareholders. They have lots of money. Venture capital money. And they're going to insurance company saying we can coordinate care, we can go into peoples home, we can do it open skydaz. And we have all the fancy computers and analytics. So we're gonna save you money, but we want a lot of that money back. Our investors need and expect that money back. So they're hiring our staff. Right. Yeah, yeah. Like they open two years ago, this is a national company. We thought, you know, New York City, where they are down in the South, they got a few but there. Whisper. They're called cityblock. Yeah, fancy website. All the data. They gonna promise to do everything and they'll then they will. They'll help people. And their shareholders will make some money. And they hire A staff at 20% greater salaries. I had a 25 year employee who left it by the year and have to go. I'll go to go and work. The woman who worked for me. Kim was a sweetheart and generally I had some family members and friends who needed help. Mostly plants whose kids needed help. I would always call Kim Kim. Can you help this person? Now she works for this other company. There's much more and more of that happening. So that's sort of the landscape of what we are. What is driving organization in terms of being? Successful in the future. And so we're getting to the aspect where we're gonna talk a little bit about growth. And scale and why it's important. We have $93 million in annual revenue. That's all money. 1200 employees. 93 million. And I'm not sure that we're big enough. We're sort of picking up like I think. For a little while, but. Depends how our investments do. It depends how much money we have to invest. And build that infrastructure that Cityblock pass. So enhancing our infrastructure. That means data systems, financial systems. quality compliance. Uhm, talent making sure we're bringing in the best talent. Because remember, we need to bless you. We need to demonstrate a return on investment. A little bit today, but much more tomorrow and way more in the years ahead. How much money are you gonna save us? So investing in infrastructure is really critical. And more sophisticated systems and staff. It's necessary as I mentioned, because we need to enter into more arrangements with risk bearing entities, risk bearing contracts. So big, big provider here in Worcester. We're talking with them about. Who were you? Know that upper right hand corner, the top of the pyramid. The this paper has the data. Who are those people? You got 508 hundred people. That have chronic conditions. That have high need behavioral health, high need physical health. We can help those people. They have adolescents with substance use that keep going in the hospital and keep going the emergency room. People with mental illness, people with depression. High levels of depression bipolar disorder. Emergency rooms in patient had missions. We can help those 500, those 800 people. Now the insurance the the payer. They are at risk themselves. With the payers Blue Cross, Harvard Pilgrim, the different insurance companies, Fallon. Contract with this primary care provider. And they say, OK, you take care of these folks, provide them basically with medical and some behavioral health care. And you get to keep some whatever savings. Well, now we have to come in. And get into those arrangements. Say we can help those 500 people or 20 people. And they'll you will get a return and we want a piece. We need a piece of that so we can pay Mary. 1020% more if it's. The state is not gonna come through with payments like that for us, we know. And it's also necessary for us, of course, to continue to develop our service lines. And develop and enhance our services. I'm gonna pause for a minute there and see if there are any questions so far. Maybe also this could be our bathroom break after questions for this morning. Perfect, yes. Yeah, both. So most of our funding today come from the state. It's both fortunate and unfortunate. They probably they they are about 90 plus percent of our total funding. So the state government. As the state entities, the Department of Mental Health. The Department of Developmental Services that the Department of Children and Families Mass Rehab Commission. All of those. Health and Human service agencies at the state level. That are essentially safety net payers. They pay to make sure. That people who can't afford. Or who need intensive levels of support and care. Get it? So people with significant mental illness, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, who have been in institutions. For a long time and turn live successfully in the community. The ugly just supports and services and the state pays us to provide those things. Children and family. Who qualify through DCF will come to us for care. That's important. So the state pays us. And they they put out, you know, they use our tax dollars, which thank goodness they have. They use our tax dollars and they put out proposals. Say we want to purchase this, we want to purchase that. So the state is our major funder and. Insurance companies. Will also seek us out and we seek them out for for funding. Other questions? Right, we do. You do. Great question. We try to run this many grant since we can't. At work pretty good at it, uh. We just hired a new brand writer. Oh yeah. He works for the city. He used to work for the City of Worcester. Oh. OK. Very excited for him to start. Oh, good. Yeah, good. I think you started either today or next month. I didn't know where he was going. Yeah. So we're really excited. So we have really good writers. The challenge with grants is they're usually. There's sort of one time and. So I know a lot of organizations will go out and try to chase down all the little grants that they can. At the same time, you know if you wanna keep that service going, you gotta just. Oh my can. With. We don't get contracts, we don't get contracts. Yeah, we do chase every single penny every year and that's why I look at the list so much. We focus the energy. I mean, what Liz does every year, she raises all of her money for her organization every year. We get these big contracts, we have to reapply once in a while for these contracts, but we don't. We don't work nearly as I was living her team in applying for grants, but we do. And we get, we get them, we try to focus on bigger ones. That maybe stretch a few years. Over a few years. Good time for break. Yeah, take 55. Alright, thank you.ll talk more 'cause our our our special guest speaker is can be and more net revenue. To invest back in the company, not with those. Shareholders right to invest back in the company. Yes, we can make a profit. Yes, we need to make a profit. We have to move. So the word nonprofit is really. Yeah, we we can and we need to make a profit at the end of the day. And those funds? Set in bank accounts. And investment accounts. For those times when we need it like we did last week, we raised our gas mileage reimbursement from $0.45 to $0.58. And it probably costs us $200,000. So. We had to do that. Right. Our staff are like driving a lot. Then we had to do it. We did no one. For money to do that. And so having that. Reserved is critically important. And we think about Gronk, OK? This little schematic here for organic growth growth that can happen and happens inside the organization often times it takes a little while. Organic growth can take time. And so it's not gonna happen overnight. Or it's not gonna happen quickly, whereas a merger or an affiliation generally has an immediate impact to your top line revenue. In this way. Organic growth, we think about the existing services we have. For existing pairs. That's fine. We do more of that. We grow the existing service with an existing pair, the partner, children and families. They pay us for this. They want us to do more of it. Yeah, well, do more of it. They want us to do a new service. The state will come to us and say, do you wanna do this new service? The same pair. But it's a new service, they say. Yeah, we have a good relationship with that pay. They pay us a lot of money. And when they say jump, we usually jump anyway, so not that much of an ask. The existing service for new customers, so the state may say, can you do this? Or people who are leaving jails and prisons. Reentry services, right. We do a lot of reentry. Help people reenter after being in jail in prison. Now if an insurance company came to us or Medicaid, the state came and said. No, that's not a good example. The state already pays us for that, but if a new pair. I kind of chuckle with an insurance company, but if insurance company said we understand you do this, we're at new pay. Could you do this? We say yeah, great. There's a new pair for an existing service. And it's sort of radical piece of doing something new for a new pair. So a new service for a new pair. Would be sort of a way for us to grow organically still. Yeah, no organization. And then we move into. Even more. Inorganic or external growth? Strategic alliance and partnerships. Joint ventures. Affiliations. And mergers. Now there are legal there are legal definitions to all of these, especially affiliations and mergers. I'll start at the bottom. Now I'm gonna start so strategic alliance. We're working with. Seven Hills and spectrum health systems. We're designing, we're coming together, and we're gonna design a new service that the state wants to buy. Or say well, we can do this. We can't do it alone. None of us can do it alone. We have to come together. So let's work on this project together. And so we're designing this alliance and partnership. We may have a subcontract between organizations. If we get chosen by the state to do this, but it's really a partnership and alliance between organizations. Now a joint venture would be an example of that would be, let's say, a year down the road. We've got this new business on the stage with these three organizations and we say we wanna create a separate company. That helps oversee this business. The states paying us for with these three companies. So we all become board members, for instance of this. Joint venture off and you can also think about it as a limited liability corporation. Many human service organizations are doing that now. They're coming together with different partners. They're saying we're all equal. We're gonna join a company. We're gonna create a limited liability joint venture company. For the purpose of this business. Not everything else we do, but really just this business. And affiliation. Which is what open sky is an affiliated and affiliate is the result of an affiliation. OK. Where two companies. Came together and and as corporations. Neither of them were dissolved. We each maintain and each of the organizations will get into it. Each of the organizations maintain. It's. Speak about it. It's so that corporate status with the state. Paperwork. Affiliation right. A merger is when two companies come together and and one of them dissolves. You're no longer a company. All of your assets. All of your liabilities are assumed by the new and the. Remaining. Corporation. So a merger, even though we talk about a merger like, oh, let's come together and work together and let's merge. Technically, a merger is when one company dissolves. And the other company takes over everything that was there. So we talk about the merger. If we're gonna go to the next slide. You might have to click it a few times. I tried to do something fancy here. Turn it unlimited. Plus, the bridge of central mass. Two companies. We're gonna talk about two companies that have been around for 50 years. Four years ago. In July this coming July. We we came together under an affiliation. OK, neither company. What's this song? So the state still sees both companies. We still submit paperwork for both companies. We still have audits for both companies, financial audits. But our affiliation is somewhat unique in that we formed a we. We created a new name. So it didn't matter which company was at the top. But one of the companies was at the top and we just changed the name of that company. OK. And at that top that company at the top. He came open sky. And we have other corporations that sit underneath it. Like the bridge in central mass and valley cast and these other small companies that we have that. Are holding companies for. Real estate and things like that, they're they don't do a lot of business person. So we came together as affiliation. We did not dissolve either corporation, so it wasn't a merger. Even though a lot of our staff talked about the merger, the merger, the merger, it really wasn't affiliation. So that's the language. Um, when it comes to the legal side of that. So why? Why did we? Need to explore partnership? Why did we need to explore partnership? Both organizations at the time. Wanted to expand our services, our mission. We both needed to strengthen our infrastructure. Improving services, expanding our continuum. Focusing on workforce. So I mentioned it's it's helpful to have lots of programs where people can work for six months here. Oh, OK. I wanna go. I wanna go do something else now. Well, stay with us. 'cause. We got other places where you could work and learn and grow. We both. Determined we needed to diversify our revenue streams, our services. And by coming together, we decrease the competition that we had between one another. Immediately and instantly, we weren't competing with each other for the same business. And there are certain economies of scale. That we can talk about from coming together. So these these were actually slides I took from four years ago when we were involved in this negotiation and this process of of learning and bringing the organizations together. So on the next slide. We talked about why, why it was a good fit for both organizations to com

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