Discussion about Survey Results of Chief Information Officer - Essay Example

The actual results: Those who work at integrated delivery systems or hospitals have backup/disaster recovery hardware, as their top priority (20%), followed by servers (18%), and lastly, laptops/tablets/PDAs (9%). Those who work at a clinical group practice have laptops/tablets/PDAs as their top priority (19%), followed by servers (12%), then Desktop PCs (6%) (Health Data Management, 2011)The reason for the above choices could be; integrated delivery system and hospitals store a lot of information about patients, and requests about the patient history and hospital programs are sent to them.

They advocate for backup/disaster recovery because they are the main source of information and management of the health management information system. Servers as a second priority are because they need to improve the flow of information to doctors and medical staff. Those involved in clinic or group practice have laptops/tablets/PCs as their priority because they can easily access information through these devices from hospitals and integrated delivery system databases. They also need servers for easy access to information and dissemination of such information to relevant departments for improved service delivery.

The reason for the difference in their choices is unknown but could be because of the differences in the number of patients, and programs the institutions handle, as explained below (number 4).Q3. Before EHR, there was a paper-based model of recording medical data. The transition from this model has opened up very many opportunities. EHR enables sharing of knowledge, skills, and competencies. It makes it possible for practitioners of HIM to carry out public health officer, data translator, and patient advocate roles.

The systems maintain high integrity levels and also improve the safety and quality of patient care. This ensures efficiency in the healthcare delivery system (AHIMA, 2004). Other benefits of EHR that make it a priority for CIOs are; It allows documentation of physician-patient or staff-patient interactions. It allows electronic requests to the pharmacies reducing errors due to handwritten prescriptions provides easy access to insurance and medical history information allows medical staff and physicians to order laboratory tests, make referrals, and view test results.

It also provides a decision support system for physicians and medical staff (Palo Alto Medical Foundation, 2011).Q4. The reasons for less concern could be due to certain assumptions like as the clinics and group practice deal with a few patients that they may know, and can easily contact the patients and get back such information; the clinics and group practices are smaller than hospitals and deal with less risky cases, disaster (which is considered highly risky) therefore is not one of the problems; they deal with very few patients and so have very little information to lose; and they deal with less risky cases compared to hospitals and so find it less important to place backup/recovery hardware as a priority. This is not sensible in medical practice because every piece of information about a patient (however little or vague it may be) is very important.