The purpose of your memo-report is to respond to your supervisor's inquiry regarding a problem in your company or at your place of work. You will not offer a definitive resolution for the problem in this memo. You want your supervisor to know that you are willing to further research the problem to determine alternative solutions and a final recommendation.

One of your goals is to concisely form your problem and cause statement. This statement must be a singular sentence describing your problem and its primary cause. Note, your healthcare diagnosis is requiring only one root cause. Regularly, problems are first usually sensed with symptoms. For example, before you know what kind of infection you have, symptoms such as a fever, runny nose, and lethargy are presented. The same holds true about problems and symptoms in business. Effects, then, are impacts. For example, an impact of the flu virus is missed work, decreased pay, and anxiety associated with making up work missed. This healthcare business problem that you choose will be the basis of increasingly complex assignments this semester, so your problem must be narrow enough to handle in a three-page paper, but broad enough to find authoritative, published material addressing the problem.

Introduction Provide (1) the context (a brief company or industry description, the instigating problem, and symptoms/effects of the problem), (2) the purpose of this report, and (3) an overview of its main headings. Provide an introductory paragraph right after the memo letterhead that includes the purpose of your paper and previews your content areas for your audience. This section does not need an "Introduction" heading. The introduction to your memo should tell your supervisor that you are presenting an analysis of the symptoms, effects of the problem on the company, possible causes of the problem and preliminary solutions.

Symptoms of the Problem Symptoms of the Problem Why does your supervisor think the company has a problem? Describe the noted symptoms leading to this conclusion. Symptoms are usually qualitative i.e., they can be described. For example, patient complaints about not their tests and treatments not being covered by themmedical insurance has increased by 5% in the last month. These actions or behaviors employeesor managers are complaining about are the symptoms of the business problem you willattempt to solve later in the semester.

Cause of the problem Analyze the situation to determine the exact cause. Your topic sentence for this section should state the problem and the cause of the problem in one sentence. Provide additional detail about thecircumstances surrounding the primary cause on the company. You may describe secondary causes in this section. Most importantly, though, determine what is causing the problem situation: for example, the problem with the miscoding of tests and treatments is due to lack of training on the new EMR system.

Effects of the problem

What are the impacts of the problem on the company? Impacts are usually more quantitative. What is this problem causing or costing the company? For example, the practice is spending 30 hours a month correcting coding errors which translates to $2,200 per month; you can calculate the approximate amount of your stated effects.

Alternative Remedies

Describe your three most viable alternatives to remedy the problem with an analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of each. Relevant research with in-text citations must be included for each alternative's advantages and disadvantages to meet the required "credibility" threshold.

Conclusion

Summarize with restatement of your purpose, a problem statement that concisely states the effect and cause of the problem situation, and your main ideas from the body of the memo-report. The problem statement should follow restatement of the purpose. For example, Company X is losing an average of #_ of patients a month resulting in a loss of approximately $___ per month because of coding errors in the new EMR system. This statement is followed by a brief recap of the information you would like your reader to remember.Close with a concluding remark that lets your supervisor know you are willing to provide further research to develop a solution. Conclusion Analyzing the symptoms, effects, causes and possible remedies of a workplace problemsharpens your ability to write a concise business memo. Be sure to pick a problem that interests you and that will allow you to do library research on the topic. This healthcare business problem that you choose will be the basis of increasingly complex assignments this semester, so your problem has to be narrow enough to handle in a three-page paper, but broad enough to find authoritative, published material addressing the problem.

Properly structured introduction, use topic sentences in each paragraph to organize the information therein, put information in the appropriate section (e.g., symptoms in the symptoms subsection: effects in the effects subsection), and (5) employ direct, straightforward, and properly punctuated sentences and end with a comprehensive conclusion that restates the purpose for writing, summarizes the problem and cause, summarizes other important ideas for the reader, and ends with an action or memory as required by the assignment.