Memorandum of Agreement

  

“Memorandum of Agreement” (MOA) between National institute of Health (NIH) and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

 

 

Introduction and Purpose.

When the government declares a state of emergency, healthcare organizations must work together to ensure the health of their patients and the general public. Sharing resources such as personnel, equipment, supplies, and logistical assistance might help hospitals that provide acute care services to address surges in patients during declared disasters or public health emergencies. There have been hundreds of memoranda of understanding (MOU) or mutual aid agreements (MAAs) signed by acute care hospitals and other healthcare organizations around the country during the past decade to facilitate possible collaboration.

This Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) is intended to establish a collaborative effort and collaboration between the two agencies to construct a jointly operated vaccination clinic to combat an outbreak that threatens to spread to other regions. Both organizations will share a single treatment clinic that provides residents with immunizations. The MOU specifies which portion of the treatment center will be occupied by NIH and which portion will be occupied by CDD. The MOU also defines the responsibilities and activities of NIH and CDC members.

Background.

The mission of the National Institutes of Health is to seek fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and to apply that knowledge to improve health, lengthen life, and reduce illness and disability, as well as to expand the knowledge base in medical and related sciences in order to improve the Nation’s economic well-being and ensure a continued high return on public investment in research.

The CDC aims to defend the United States against foreign and domestic health, safety, and security risks. Whether diseases originate domestically or overseas, are chronic or acute, curable or avoidable, the result of human error or a deliberate attack, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) fights disease and assists communities and citizens in doing the same. The CDC increases the nation’s health security. As the nation’s health protection agency, the CDC protects individuals from health hazards and saves lives. To achieve its’ objective, the CDC performs vital research and disseminates health information that protects the nation against costly and hazardous health threats, and responds to their emergence.

The goals of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) overlap in the realms of public health and safety. The objective of this MOA is to formalize the partnership in order to facilitate future encounters.

Responsibilities.

The mission of the clinic is to improve the lives of people of all ages through basic, translational, and clinical research that leads to the development and implementation of safe and effective vaccines against infectious diseases of global significance and an epidemic that threatens to spread to other regions.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH)

The responsibilities of the agency are;

• to promote fundamentally creative discoveries, novel research techniques, and their applications as the foundation for eventually safeguarding and promoting health;
• to create, sustain, and renew scientific human and physical resources that will ensure the country’s ability to prevent disease;
• to broaden the knowledge base in medical and related sciences in order to improve the nation’s economic well-being and ensure a continuing high return on public research investment; and
• to demonstrate and support the greatest level of scientific integrity, public accountability, and social responsibility in scientific conduct

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

The responsibilities of the agency are;

• Identifying and responding to emerging health threats
• Taking on the most serious health issues that are causing death and disability in the United States
• Applying science and modern technologies to illness prevention
• Promoting healthy and safe behaviors in individuals, communities, and the environment
• Leader development and training for the public health workforce, including disease detectives
• Taking the temperature of our country’s health

Duration of Agreement

This Memorandum of Understanding will be valid for five years from the date of last signature. Both parties will negotiate expiration or renewal approximately six months before expiration, based on an assessment of the continuing value of the Agreement to both parties. The Agreement may be ended at any time by any party giving the other written notice.

Limitations

Trust, interdependence, perceptions and expectations of the other professional, competence, interest in collaborative practice, role definition, and communication were the most significant barriers to the joint clinic project. In order to maximize the success of the clinic, the management of both agencies would work to resolve and mitigate the restrictions.

 

Management Effectiveness

A management style is the manner in which a manager achieves their objectives. A manager’s management style include how they plan, organize, make decisions, delegate, and manage their workforce. The NIH employs an autocratic management style characterized by a top-down approach and one-way communication from supervisors to staff. In contrast, the CDC adopts a democratic management style in which managers encourage employees to provide input during the decision-making process, but ultimately bear responsibility for the final decision.

For the purpose of this joint clinic initiative, a Collaborative management style will be implemented, in which Managers closely monitor the performance of their employees and micromanage their work without trusting or believing that their employees can achieve their goals without constant supervision. This will increase management effectiveness of the joint clinic initiative.

Signatories:

for the NIH:                                                                for the CDC:

_______________________________                      ______________________________

(typed name and title)                                                 (typed name and title)

__________________                                                ___________________

Date                                                                            Date

Comparison and Analysis

The joint clinic initiative is consistent with New Public Management (NPM) and Collaborative Public Management (CPM) in that it seeks to build an administration by implementing flexibility, transparency, minimal government, de-bureaucratization, decentralization, market orientation of public services, and privatization. The sharing of interests and efforts in public administration is referred to as collaboration in public management (Agranoff, 2006). Actors in public management form links and affiliations (Buuren, 2009). CPM occurs in a joint clinic when all players have something to offer and encourage others to find solutions to challenges that cannot be solved by a single actor. CPM is visible in the joint clinic effort since it focuses on coordination and collaboration among many public agencies, which is critical in addressing today’s complex societal concerns. The establishment and implementation of cross-jurisdictional arrangements and agreements is frequently the focus of CPM.

The six fundamental concepts of NPM are included into the joint clinic program that serves as the foundation for the collaboration between the NIH and the CDC. The principles include emphasizing economic efficiency and effectiveness while downplaying regulation, reorganizing bureaucracy into different agencies, increasing competition through the implementation of quasi-market and contract systems, lowering expenses and facilitating income growth, shifting to greater competition in public sectors, and emphasizing private sector management styles, (McGuire, 2006). In other words, integrating corporate characteristics into public-sector bureaucracies while maintaining their organizational essence.

The collaborative clinic will also seek to build a customer-service-oriented approach to government service delivery. This approach may be useful because the government is expected to focus more on quality and customer service, rather than just the process of providing services. The reality that today’s concerns are greater than one organization was one of the primary issues that led to the partnership and development of the joint clinic. Outsourcing in government organizations is also increasing in volume and financial value, necessitating coordinated initiatives. Improving organizational performance in government organizations necessitates collaborative initiatives as well. Information sharing is becoming more widespread as technology advances. Finally, it has the potential to generate new and distinct kinds of collaborative problem solving and decision making.

References

Agranoff, R. (2006). Inside collaborative networks: Ten lessons for public managers. Public administration review, 66, 56-65.

Buuren, A. V. (2009). Knowledge for governance, governance of knowledge: Inclusive knowledge management in collaborative governance processes. international public management journal, 12(2), 208-235.

McGuire, M. (2006). Collaborative public management: Assessing what we know and how we know it. Public administration review, 66, 33-43.

O’Leary, R., & Gerard, C. 8c Bingham, L.(2006). Introduction to the symposium on collaborative public management. Public Administration Review, 66, 6-9.

Provan, K. G., & Milward, H. B. (2001). Do networks really work? A framework for evaluating public‐sector organizational networks. Public administration review, 61(4), 414-423.

Thomson, A. M., & Perry, J. L. (2006). Collaboration processes: Inside the black box. Public administration review, 66, 20-32.