Impact of IT on Healthcare Business Introduction in Otowa Hospita

Question: Discuss about the Impact of IT on Healthcare Business -EMR Introduction in Otowa Hospital. Answer: Introduction IN hospital management, there are many challenges that have to be addressed, one of which is the loss that a hospital incurs in its attempt to provide best services to its deserving patients. While providing high quality services to patients, they have to take case of effectiveness and efficiencies of the management as well as ensure fairness of operations. To be able to do this, many hospitals are computerizing their services. Introduction of electronic medical records is one such strategy that is supported by government for healthcare industry. With EMR use in hospitals, management can make use of the information technology for operational improvements. This study explores the adoption of EMR in Otowa Hospital to understanding how can IT system can help a hospital system to achieve success in operations. IT can be used for enhancing the organizational performance. The impact of adoption on the organization is studied considering product development, inventory management, business relations, within organization relationships, logistics, and so on. Importance of IT Information technology systems have become a subject of importance in many business applications. IT in itself would not bring success to an organization as it is only a tool to use to get results but how it would interact with various elements of an organization that would determine the success of the organization. It can have impacts on various components of a business including social systems, economic system, asks, communication and organizational performance. A resource based view of IT adoption suggests that differences between the companies resources and companies capabilities can be filled using IT systems which would bring up the performance of an organization(Genpact, 2014). IT Application Requirements In order to have a successful adoption of an IT system such as EMR, an organization needs to have implementation of new processes as well as changes in the organization simultaneously. People from functional divisions need to make a team for analyzing process requirements for adoption of IT system. When EMR was adopted for the hospital operations, a team was selected from functional divisions and a process analysis was done for reviewing requirements and resolving conflicts or obstacles that were causing problems in the information flow happening between hospital and patients. The IT capacity of the organization was internalize by developing medical engineering and doing customization in the software for accommodation of processes(Hengst Sol, 2001). Use of IT IT is majorly used in healthcare systems for storing data such as EMR, ordering systems for electronic transmission of medical treatments such as doses and instructions, and accounting system for computing costs and creating receipts. Many a times companies can also integrated all the three types of system in to EMR. Most times, EMR system is initiates as an attempt to resolve an operational problem of a hospital just as it was the case for Otowa hospital. In Otowa Hospital, there were some operational challenges that were required it be resolved for which implementation of the IT system was considered. The hospital had 698 beds which was largest in number compared to all the other hospitals in the city . When the hospital was established in 1980, I was made to cater to only meet local requests of in-patients but later the hospital was transformed into general hospital. The medical subjects were increased to 29 and a comprehensive set of services were added. Its acute functions were increased and a certification was obtained for the same from Japan in 2002. In 2003, Otowa Hospital was the first one to get ISO 9000 certification. The certification indicated that the hospital had high quality medical services and testing systems(Brodar, et al., 2009). Figure 1: Flow of Patients and Medical Records However, with increasing number of patients day by day resulted into an increase in the challenges for the hospital operations. There were a large number of out-patients who were using the services of the hospital. A major challenge was that the medical services provided by the hospital were not synchronized the medical records management processes. These medical services included reception, diagnostics, testing, drug preparation, billing, and payment. Flow of medical records management included batch processing for search, conveyance, and posting. Because of the discontinuity, time gaps between diagnostics and conveying of medical records were significant. Even after the diagnostics was completed, the staff could not take the immediate next step unless his medical record arrived adding to the waiting time for the patients. This resulted into limitations in the number of patients who could be diagnosed by the hospital(MURIITHI KARIUKI, 2013). Functional divisions found it difficult to coordinate and cooperate with each other which were required to reduce this time gap and smoothen the flow of processes and information. They included doctors, nurses, clerical workers, and co-medicals such as technologists and pharmacist. Further, the hospital did not have any authorization system for controlling divisions making it difficult to integrate their operations. Needs were realized for reducing the waiting time for patients and for improving internal processes such that capacity to accept out-patients would be increased. EMR was introduced with objectives of making operational improvements, making structural changes that would lead to reduction in costs, shorten the waiting time and reduce the unproductive time. Advantages of IT EMR brought in certain advantages for the hospital operations including: Number of procedural steps were reduced which not only simplify the operations of the hospital but also synchronized the flow of data in the hospital with the flow of people. As soon as the patient was identified at the reception desk, the data of the patient can immediately be displayed in the doctors computer. The waiting time for the patients was reduced as time consuming steps in batch processing of the data were reduced. For out-patients, the waiting time was reduced from 70 minutes to 35 minutes. Processes that did not add any value to the system such as waiting and bill preparation was reduced from 34 minutes to 3 minutes. A shorter waiting time for patient increased the customer satisfaction The efficiency of operations was improved because of which , more patients could be diagnosed in the same time which increased the earnings for the hospital. Short waiting time also reduced the need to have a large waiting room such the space which was freed could be used for other purposes as the waiting room needed was smaller The work steps required for the internal staff for managing patients was reduced from 38 to 14 for outpatients and from 18 to 12 for in-patients. Doctors were able to save time required for retrieving the records, and check test data or other types of medical records as they could obtain the data anytime. Most of the paper work that was required to be done by nurses was eliminated and this included searching, conveyance, writing, and transfer as they could use the wireless facilities to access medical records. As nurses could retrieve information from anywhere within the hospital, they were able to better serve and provide treatment to their patients. Performance of accountants was also improved as their work was both standardized and simplified. Hospital could make use of human resources more effectively. Need for handwriting reduced the rudimentary errors. The errors per 10,000 prescriptions were reduce from 1 in 2000 to 0.5 in 2000. Performance of clerical workers as well as nurses has improved because of standardized tasks raising the operational efficiency of the hospital. Improvements in the billing systems expanded the revenues for the hospital as medical record transfer errors were reduced leading to accurate fee collection With reduction in work steps improved the working conditions for all the workers in the hospital (Seung-Hwan KUBO, 2007) IT risks While IT brings operational efficiencies for the hospital system, it also brings certain risks such as: If there are system failures then it can result into disconnection of emergency services from the network resulting into a disruption in all IT services. Thus, it is always recommended that hospital management has alternative system ready that can work without IT systems in the cases of emergencies before the IT systems could be repaired or a disaster recovery is done. A malicious virus attack on hospital systems can result into leakage of personal patients data from the healthcare system. Thus, it is recommend to use appropriate authentication mechanisms to protect the patients data(Elky, 2006). There can also be insider threats when the staff of the company can misuse the data or inflict some kind of damage to patients or other staff members using information. Thus, it is advisable to keep internal work monitoring such that employees can be made responsible and accountable for their actions(JIRA Security and Privacy Committee (SPC) , 2007). Maintenance and Monitoring of IT Maintenance of IT systems involve defining monitoring requirements, using preventive maintenance, taking corrective actions in cases of problems, taking performance review of IT systems and quantification of risks that are faced by the system. While monitoring systems, difference performance parameters are considered for different conditions of the systems. Stand-by system use reliability as the performance measure and it would involve measurements like fail-to-start or run per 100 attempts. Operating systems are monitored for preface using the measure of availability. It would involve measurement of the time for which the system is available during the whole working hours(Hamrick, 2006). IT systems are usually managed using preventive maintenance which involves monitoring of systems while they are operational such that if a system is found to be giving problem , it is discontinued or repaired before the availability of the system can affect the operations of the organization. Once in a year performance reviews can be taken in which performance issues are identified and corrective actions are decided. This requires setting of performance criteria which would be measures to assess the performance of IT systems to evaluate the operational experience(Gregor Chockie, 2006). Conclusions This paper explored the impacts that IT systems can cause on a business for which a case of adoption of IT was taken. The case of Otowa hospital that implemented an EMR system for managing information flow in the hospital was explored to understand what advantages and IT system can bring to the organization, what risks organization has to face and how the systems can be monitored and maintained. It was found that post implementation of the IT system, the hospital experience many operational improvements such as elimination of some of the non-value adding tasks, fast and real time access to patient records, reduction in the work steps for staff, and so on. References Brodar, K., Calopa, M. K. Pihir, I., 2009. Impact of ICT on the Structural and Contextual Organizational. JIOS, 33(2), pp. 243-254. Elky, S., 2006. An Introduction to Information System Risk Management, s.l.: SANS Institute. Genpact, 2014. The impact of technology on business process operations: Research results across industries and functions, s.l.: Genpact. Gregor, F. Chockie, A., 2006. 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