Data Stewardship Mini-Case - Essay Example

10–1. Identify critical success factors for the system integration of the two practices discussed in the MMG mini-case that follows. The Metropolitan Medical Group (MMG) involved the integration of 5 offices. These five offices had centralized billing and administrative services and several functions were integrated including the patient medical record databases, provider billing, treatment codes databases and the referral database. These include:- The requirement of high quality data which involves controlling the manner in which the data has been accessed, handling the updates of the data, and ensuring that the data has properly been validated. The process of data stewardship would ensure that the right data reaches the right person at the right time, and in this manner ensure that the right decision can be made. There are 4 elements to data stewardship including the quality of data, adequate management, data protection and security, and business intelligence. The technology should be available so that accumulated data can be utilized in the most efficient manner to ensure that there are improvements in quality for the hospital The process followed by the organization should ensure that it supports and enables the technology, people and data stewardship. The flow of information should be supported by the processes of the organization. People play a vital role in the development, implementation and evaluation of the HMIS, and it is important that people be trained to ensure that the quality and use of the data is good. 10–2. What are some of the project management implications for the integration of the practices? There were implications to the data quality, data management, data security, business intelligence. There should be certain rules for standardizing data, transforming the data and ensuring that it is mapped accurately to the current data, so that the new data obtained is consistent and accurate. With relation to data management, two types of data need to be managed including master data and transactional data. Master data is that data may be used across the organization and include patient data, provider information and billing codes, whereas transactional data refers to data that is related to particular transactions. Master data needs to be cleansed and stored permanently, whereas transactional data is used for analytical purposes. Data security refers to should be in line with the laws so that the authorized personnel can access data, and physical and computerized means are provided to protect the data. Besides, the data should be adequately backed-up to ensure any kind of problems at the database would not result in loss of data. Business intelligence implications would refer to the HMIS design and implementation being able to ensure that the quality of data captured would be high, hence the company would be in a better position to monitor and track its business and ensure that the information present could be used to the benefit of the company. 10–4. How would you secure access to the data and what personnel implications do you foresee? How do you ensure that the proper records are updated in a timely manner? Secure access to the data can be ensured by physical and computerized means, and should be enabled through the design and implementation of the HMIS system. The laws governing the use and protection of the patient database should be followed, for example the HIPAA standards. In order to prevent personnel from misusing the data and walking out of the patient data, appropriate standards should be followed. A wrong employee having access to the wrong patient can create havoc in the organization. Various protocols should be followed to protect the information from viruses, Trojans, worms, spyware and intrusion attacks. Disaster recovery is also an important area that needs to be protected. Hence back-up processes, maintaining the disaster recovery site off-campus, and reducing the downtime by off-site storage rather than using backup tapes. In the past tapes were used to take backups, but may be difficult in the case of incremental data update. Besides, there is a need to update the HMIS privacy and security policy on a yearly basis and ensure that qualified personnel work in this area. 10–5. The combined practice wants to implement wireless notepads for the physicians and staff to make changes directly to a patient’s records. What data integrity and security issues do you foresee? The patient data can be considered as master data that have be extracted from the data, stored on a permanent basis and used by the transactional data from time-to-time. The patient data would have to be cleansed, processed, standardized, matched, transformed and ultimately loaded into the master database or data warehouse from time-to-time, and also updated when needed. Protection and security of this data warehouse storing the patient information should follow the HIPAA guidelines. Access and rights to the users assigned should be restricted and monitored frequently. Each user should be given access depending on their roles played. Before such access is given, their roles and rights need to be reviewed and assigned. Each user should be given a user account and a password, and the system that is given such access should be cleansed of all viruses, Trojans, worms and unintended software programs. The role a person is playing should match the workflow, as there could be loss of concentration from the individual, leading to errors. Changes should be made with the staffing such that roles do go in line with the workflow. This would support the new network configuration, wherein the master data warehouse would be constantly talking to the transaction data warehouse, and all the master as well as transactional data from various offices would be following into the 2 main data warehouses. In this both master and transactional data can be used for patient records, referrals, billing, and treatment codes and services databases. 10–6. What key performance indicators should the management of the practice monitor? The KPI’s should be related to service efficiency, service effectiveness and service excellence. The main aim of the service efficiency would be to lower the cost of the service and this could be achieved by using nursing schedulers, pharmacy inventories, medical record systems, resource utilization reports and cost accounting on the HMIS. The main aim of the service effectiveness would be to maximize the benefits of the series and to ensure that values are achieved. This can provide by billing systems, utilization forecasts, performance tracking, integrating the database, responsibility tracking, and providing end-user services on the HMIS. Service excellence would ensure that the best practices are followed and this can be achieved on the HMIS by providing teleradiology services, nursing expert, medical and laboratory intelligence services, real-time tracking, strategic applications and continuous quality monitoring and improvement. 10–8. What is the importance of having end-user involvement in the implementation of the combined HMIS? How do you go about getting them engaged in the process? End-users are required in the implementation of the HMIS due to several reasons:- To understand their specialization so that their roles and responsibilities related to the HMIS use can be ascertained Ensuring that there is no clash between the responsibilities of the personnel and their roles with relation to the database workflows To ensure that the personnel are properly trained so that the quality of data obtained would be appropriate To reduce the chances of errors crawling into the database The inclusion of personnel should start away right from the very first discussion of having a HMIS system in the hospital. The Hospital IT department should never commit to implementing the HMIS, but should rather be an enabler, providing the users with support and means of ensuring that the patient data is of high quality. If there is a shortage of knowledge in the organization with personnel who have skills in the IT field, then personnel from outside should be brought in. The sources of all data that is present should be identified and the personnel handling or using this data should be identified. The [process of collecting the data and using it should be reviewed and changed, along with changes made to the responsibilities of the personnel. Based on the roles and responsibilities they would be playing with the HMIS usage, their training needs can be understood. Reference Tan, J. and Payton, F. C. (2010). Adaptive Health Management Information Systems: Concepts, Cases and Practical Applications, 3rd ed, Sudbury: Jones and Bartlett. http://www.scribd.com/SAUD2009/d/52501345-HealthSystems?query=data+stewardship Read More