Reflect back to the health information system you proposed in Week 1. Before any health information system can be successfully implemented, there must be a team of experts who understand the vision and mission of both the health care organization and its stakeholders. Strategic health care leaders are positioned to propose system upgrades and/or implementations that can withstand inevitable organizational changes. Health information systems’ leaders understand that data is the overall management of the availability, usability, integrity and security of the data.
All the following items must be addressed in your paper:
Compare and contrast the limitations and opportunities in enterprise-wide data.
Defend your technology infrastructure’s ability to support organizational leadership and end-user needs.
Must include a separate title page with the following:
Title of paper
Instructor’s name
Link for AHRQ Health IT Success Stories
Case 16 info:
Case 16: The Admitting System Crashes
Jones Regional Medical Center is a large academic health center. With nine hundred beds, Jones had
forty-seven thousand admissions last year. Jones frequently has occupancy in excess of 100 percent,
requiring diversion of ambulances. In addition, Jones had 1,300,000 ambulatory and emergency room
visits in the past three years.
Jones is internationally renowned for its research and teaching programs. The IT staff members at Jones
are highly regarded. They support more than three hundred applications and twelve thousand
workstations.
The admitting system at Jones is provided by the vendor Technology Med (TechMed). The TechMed
system supports the master patient index; registration; inpatient charge and payment entry; medical
records abstracting and coding; hospital billing and patient accounting; reporting; and admission,
discharge, and transfer capabilities.
The TechMed system was implemented twelve years ago and uses now-obsolete technology, including a
rudimentary database management system. The organization is concerned about the fragility of the
application and has begun plans to replace the TechMed system two years from now.
Information Systems Challenge
On December 20, the link between the main data center (where the TechMed servers were housed) and
the disaster recovery center was taken down to conduct performance testing.
On December 21, power was lost to the disaster recovery center, but emergency power was instantly
put in place. However, as a precaution, a backup of the TechMed database was performed.
During the afternoon of December 21, the TechMed system became sluggish and then unresponsive.
Database corruption was discovered. The backup performed earlier in the day was also corrupt. The link
to the disaster recovery data center had not been restored following the performance testing.
Because there was no viable backup copy of the database, the Jones IT and hospital staff members
began the arduous process of a full database recovery from journaled transactions. This process was
completed the evening of December 22.
The loss of the TechMed system for more than thirty-six hours and the failure during that time of
registration transactions to update patient care and ancillary department systems resulted in a wide
variety of operational problems. The patient census had to be maintained manually. Reports of results
were delayed. Paper orders were needed for patients who were admitted on December 21 and 22.
Charge collection lagged.
Once the TechMed system was restored, additional hospital staff members were brought in to enter,
into multiple systems, the data that had been manually captured during the outage. By December 25,
normal hospital operations were restored. No patient care incidents are believed to have resulted.
Case 16 info:
Case 16: The Admitting System Crashes
Jones Regional Medical Center is a large academic health center. With nine hundred beds, Jones had
forty-seven thousand admissions last year. Jones frequently has occupancy in excess of 100 percent,
requiring diversion of ambulances. In addition, Jones had 1,300,000 ambulatory and emergency room
visits in the past three years.
Jones is internationally renowned for its research and teaching programs. The IT staff members at Jones
are highly regarded. They support more than three hundred applications and twelve thousand
workstations.
The admitting system at Jones is provided by the vendor Technology Med (TechMed). The TechMed
system supports the master patient index; registration; inpatient charge and payment entry; medical
records abstracting and coding; hospital billing and patient accounting; reporting; and admission,
discharge, and transfer capabilities.
The TechMed system was implemented twelve years ago and uses now-obsolete technology, including a
rudimentary database management system. The organization is concerned about the fragility of the
application and has begun plans to replace the TechMed system two years from now.
Information Systems Challenge
On December 20, the link between the main data center (where the TechMed servers were housed) and
the disaster recovery center was taken down to conduct performance testing.
On December 21, power was lost to the disaster recovery center, but emergency power was instantly
put in place. However, as a precaution, a backup of the TechMed database was performed.
During the afternoon of December 21, the TechMed system became sluggish and then unresponsive.
Database corruption was discovered. The backup performed earlier in the day was also corrupt. The link
to the disaster recovery data center had not been restored following the performance testing.
Because there was no viable backup copy of the database, the Jones IT and hospital staff members
began the arduous process of a full database recovery from journaled transactions. This process was
completed the evening of December 22.
The loss of the TechMed system for more than thirty-six hours and the failure during that time of
registration transactions to update patient care and ancillary department systems resulted in a wide
variety of operational problems. The patient census had to be maintained manually. Reports of results
were delayed. Paper orders were needed for patients who were admitted on December 21 and 22.
Charge collection lagged.
Once the TechMed system was restored, additional hospital staff members were brought in to enter,
into multiple systems, the data that had been manually captured during the outage. By December 25,
normal hospital operations were restored. No patient care incidents are believed to have resulted.
1
Health Information System Case Selection and Proposal
2
BACKGROUND
ABC health care facility is a medium size facility with 2000 staff members, attending to
more than 90,000 patients in a year and has 350 patient beds. The healthcare facility in Jersey
City serves a community of more than 300,000 people. The facility records about 30,000
emergency and ambulatory visits. Based on such, the facility requires a well-structured
information technology team to ensure efficient record keeping. The hospital uses TechMed as
the main EHR system that supports admissions, patient index, transfer and discharge. EHR is an
essential part of healthcare record keeping today because of its perceived benefits that include
more secure patient record keeping, increased accuracy and dependability, and enabling
caregivers to collaborate and share patient records for improved patient treatment outcome
(Hossain et al., 2019)
Setting
The healthcare facility takes care of different patients. They undergo the admission
process when they first visit the facility. The facility uses an EHR system to obtain and record
important information about the patient, which may fail. The project will focus on this area to
address challenges that may occur.
Healthcare service:
The main focus of the research paper will be on the Crashing of the Admitting System,
highlighted in Case 16 of the module reading, Health Care Information System. The research
paper will also address the action needed when such incidents occur.
Problem
3
EHR records important patient information. However, the system has been in place for
more than a decade, and sometimes it malfunctions. The challenges experienced from the
breakdown are enormous, from recording patient history to delayed reporting. Also, the
breakdown contributes to the complete shift from online services to paperwork which takes time
and causes a delay in service delivery (Atasoy et al., 2019). A complete shift to the manual
system may lead to human errors in data collection or taking patient history, which affects the
quality of care offered to the patient.
Barriers to quality
Failure of the EHR system has various challenges, affecting the patient’s safety and
quality of services delivered. Data is lost; hence, medical history, including those under critical
health conditions, cannot be accessed. Healthcare providers cannot offer the best care services,
impacting the quality delivered.
THE INTERVENTIONS
There is a need to conduct detailed research on the best way to address the challenges that
occur during system failures. Implementation of a new system with an upgraded interface is the
first intervention. Also, implementing backup toolkits that are easily located should be in place.
In case of a complete breakdown, guidance on accurately collecting manual information should
be implemented. Staff training is also essential to ensure accuracy while conducting manual
admissions and reporting.
Process defect
The project aims to have a better approach to solving the crash of the admitting system through
the Plan, Do, Check, Act technique (PDCA).
Aim
4
The aim is to have an upgraded EHR system that does not crash easily and ensures effective data
backup for quality patient care.
STRATEGY FOR IMPLEMENTATION
The IT team will communicate strategically with staff to ensure a smooth transition.
There is also the need to communicate with the finance department on the budget needed for a
new system. A backup of data held in the current system will be done and then transferred to the
new system. Staff members will be trained on the new system and how to ensure they back up
data frequently. Also, securing the system against data breaches will be done to protect patient’s
information.
Measures
The system’s effectiveness will be determined by ensuring there are no errors in data and
the system is safe against breaks downs regardless of workload.
Barriers to change
Resistance from workers, management may be unwilling to fund the new system,
healthcare workers may be overwhelmed by the system in place, unwilling to learn the new
system, and negative history of the previous changes in the system (Loncar-Turukalo et al.,
2019).
Simple rules
Implementation of the system has considered the safety of employees. The EHR system
should always be operational to ensure accuracy, patient information should be safeguarded
effectively, and the healthcare organization have an efficient backup system in place.
Cost implication
5
The hospital has an EHR system, yet it needs an upgraded one. The cost of buying a new
system, installation and training the staff is expected to be high. However, the implications are
worth the risk as they safeguard against future downtimes, which may cause more losses. The
system will reduce wasted time and improve productivity in the long run.
6
References
Atasoy, H., Greenwood, B. N., & McCullough, J. S. (2019). The digitization of patient care: a
review of the effects of electronic health records on health care quality and
utilization. Annual review of public health, pp. 40, 487–500.
Hossain, A., Quaresma, R., & Rahman, H. (2019). Investigating factors influencing the
physicians’ adoption of electronic health record (EHR) in the healthcare system of
Bangladesh: An empirical study. International Journal of Information Management, 44,
76-87.
Loncar-Turukalo, T., Zdravevski, E., da Silva, J. M., Chouvarda, I., & Trajkovik, V. (2019).
Literature on wearable technology for connected health: A scoping review of research
trends, advances, and barriers. Journal of medical Internet research, 21(9), e14017.
Wager, K. A., Lee, F. W., & Glaser, J. P. (2017). Health care information systems: A practical
approach for health care management (4th Ed.). Retrieved from
https://www.vitalsource.com
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