Health Care System in Advanced Care Inc - Case Study Example

? HEALTH CARE SYSTEM IN ADVANCED CARE INC A brief history of Advanced Care Inc Advanced Care Inc is a joint commission accredited and licensed infusion pharmacy and nursing agency. It was founded in 1986. Its headquarters is Long Island, New York. Other offices are located in Albany and Syracuse. Home infusion therapy is a comparatively new service compared to home care services like personal care services and wound care. It enjoys a firm standing of offering its patients with excellent services of home infusion. While the duration of the patient stay continues to shorten therapies that were traditionally completed in the acute care setting are performed at home (Advanced care Inc, 2012). Finishing a course of intravenous antibiotic therapy used to be a rational for hospitalizing patients and this is not the case anymore. As long as the patient is steady, a peripherally inserted central venous catheter is placed and the patient is sent home with the catheter. Arrangements for the client are also made for them to get and complete a therapy at home. As both a licensed and a joint accredited infusion pharmacy, Advanced Care Inc makes the patient comfortable and safe at home. Advanced care Inc understands its requirement for exceptional healthcare. It pays great detail and excellent care as the home infusion specialists. This is a company owned by nurses and this makes its concentrate on the patient’s wellbeing. The company also commits itself to advanced patient care by offering both nursing and pharmacy services. The company’s main objective is to put the needs of the patients first and not profits. With the company’s experienced pharmacy staff and nursing staff, it continues to develop to meet the needs of insurance companies, physicians, hospital discharge personnel and individual patients. Infusion therapy involves the administration of medication through a needle or catheter. It is prescribed when a patient’s condition is so severe that it cannot be treated effectively by oral medications. Typically, “infusion therapy” means that a drug is administered intravenously, but the term also may refer to situations where drugs are provided through other non-oral routes, such as intramuscular injections and epidural routes (into the membranes surrounding the spinal cord). Diseases commonly requiring infusion therapy include infections that are unresponsive to oral antibiotics, cancer and cancer-related pain, dehydration, gastrointestinal diseases or disorders which prevent normal functioning of the gastrointestinal system, and more (Advanced care Inc, 2012). Other conditions treated with specialty infusion therapies may include cancers, congestive heart failure, Crohn’s Disease, hemophilia, immune deficiencies, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, and more. Home Infusion Therapy Until the 1980s, patients who used to get infusion therapy had stay in the setting of inpatient for the period when they got the therapy. Amplified importance on cost-containment in healthcare plus expansion in the administration of clinical therapy, led to approaches of administering infusion therapy in alternate settings. For individuals who need long-term therapy, in patient care is not just extremely costly, but also averts the individual from recommencing normal work activities and lifestyles. Home infusion has been confirmed to be efficient and safe to inpatient care for a number of therapies and diseases. For most patients, getting treated at home or outpatient infusion group setting is appropriate for the care of inpatient. A number of providers of therapies of home infusion work on more than one ambulatory infusion suites that are preferably meant for some situations of patient therapy. A provider of infusion therapy is usually a closed door pharmacy that provides infusion therapies at the comfort of the home. Demographic Information Patients of all ages and races visit the hospital on a regular basis. These patients include patients aged between 13 years up to 30 years. Patients aged 30 years and above also visit Advanced Care Inc. but on quite rare occasions. The races that visit Advanced Care Inc. are Asians, black Americans, and some Europeans. Services offered The services offered include pain management, in-hospital assessments, IV therapy Nursing, mid-line insertion, insurance enteral, inotrope, TPN, hydration and chemotherapy. It also does infusion therapy. Infusion therapy is the administration of medication via a catheter or needle. Normally, infusion therapy means that a drug has to be administered intravenously, but the term may also mean situations when the drug is given via other routes that are non-oral. Infusion therapy is also given to patients for treating a wide variety of often persistent and sometimes rare diseases where special infusion medication infusion becomes effective. The main home infusion therapies include IV antibiotics that are chiefly prescribed for such diagnosis as osteomyelitis, sepsis and cellulitis. Other diagnoses include sinusitis, pneumonia and urinary tract infection. For most patients, getting infusion treatment at home is preferable compared to hospital or inpatient care. Patients often recover faster at home than when they are in the hospital. Apart from the benefits of getting treatment at the comfort of the home, the infusion treatment is quite affordable at home than in the hospital. In most situations, patients often get back to their usual work activities and lifestyles faster when they are treated at home. Full Service & Discreet Home Infusion Care Advanced Care Inc ships medications and supplies of infusion pharmacy in any place within the USA. It offers careful, complete service home infusion care, which includes licensed nursing agency and infusion pharmacy and for home visits that is accessible for Upstate NY, NJ Metro Area, and Long Island NYC with local offices at Albany, Syracuse and Long Island, Syracuse. Advanced Care Inc staff Registered Nurses (RN) The staff of Advanced Care Inc is RN’s for weekends, nights and days. The RNs in Advanced Care Inc are responsible for assessing the attendance of a written advanced directive. They also get information on the substance of a finished, written advance directive. They assess the need for info on the advance directives and advance care planning when there are no written advanced directives (Advanced care Inc, 2012). They also assess the preferences of evidence of healthcare when patients cannot make their own decisions. They give info on the current medical situation as suitable. They campaign for a scheme of care that is reliable preferences for future healthcare decision making and ensure that others participate when necessary. There are also RN case manager home infusion and RN per diem. Advanced Care Inc health operation Once the patient is sent home with a peripherally inserted central catheter, the pharmacy department reviews the treatment orders and ships the essential ancillary supplies and medication for treatment. Once this has been done, the nursing department assigns an RN who visits the patient for an initial start of care (SOC). During the SOC, the RN performs an inclusive medication reconciliation/assessment/nutritional assessment/fall risk assessment/ and prescribed medication monograph (Advanced care Inc, 2012). Then the teaching starts. Patients are usually taught appropriate hand washing, use of ancillary supplies, flushing the catheter line, preparing the medication for administration, flushing the line after administration, anchoring and clamping the line such that it is not damaged or pulled as they work. Advance Care Health Information System Electronic call monitoring (ECM) iConnect is a major constituent of advanced mobile suite and is written for the function of managing care workers in Advance care Inc. ECM is the first and the most widely used healthcare information system used in Advanced care Inc. The business drivers for the introduction of the ECM are to deliver billing and contracts (Advanced care Inc, 2012). The iConnect removes effort and risk and ensures that there is compliance. In the homecare environment, unconditional evidence of presence inside the service user’s home is vital (Information for care everywhere, 2012). Therefore, iConnect uses NFC tagging as the main evidence of position. NFC has the following benefits for use as the chief logging technology: An RFID tag is attached or fixed inside the location or the premises that ought to be visited. Therefore, the care worker must be within a short distance (centimeters) to touch in out. This is not like the monitoring that is based on GPS that may only show that the care worker has driven closer to an address. The NFC tagging almost uses no power. Therefore, this offers an extended battery life that is longer than GPS-based positioning that is chiefly draining. The data or the NFC tags that they impart are impossible to copy unlike systems of simple bar code that is easy to move copy or photograph. NFC readers do not use any technology of the camera and, therefore, do not depend on lens orientation or cleanliness. NFC tagging does not require live connectivity like the systems that are based on GPS that must maintain either telephone or wireless telephone connectivity to map coordinates accurately. NFC tagging does not need the utilization of smart phones that are both extremely costly and thieves can easily steal. Smart phones may be used with iConnect if needed. However, they are not mandatory. In the actual world of the mobile care employees, things will disappear, issues will come up and items may also get broken. Therefore, it is essential that ECM system offers numerous failsafe and backup measures to ensure the maintenance of compliance (Tuljapurkar, Ogawa & Gauthier, 2010). Whilst the monitoring of NFC is the chief mode of call logging, every user of iConnect also has direct access to monitoring of Advanced Land line call. In any case the care worker breaks or loses their mobile phone; they often use the service user’s land line for calling a free telephone line to log their departure and arrival times. These logs update precisely the same data in precisely the same way that the NFC touches. This means that there is efficiently no reason for a care worker to avoid logging their calls. This guarantees remarkably high accuracy and compliance of both the KPI’s and alarms. As additional back up methods, iConnect also ensures that there is recognition of photos, geo-location and collection of signature as secondary technologies that have advantages in certain situations. Providers often face material company risk if there is the violation of confidentiality or security. The entire Advances mobile suite offers certain reassurance in the following respect: The associated constituents of iConnect are often subjected to a prescribed penetration testing by bodies that have been certified externally. Usually there is no storage or transmission of data or it’s relating constituents outside Advanced Care Inc. There is protection of all the info or data that is conveyed under the encryption and also the devices The advanced staff undergoes training of the standards of info of NHS for risk management and information governance. Incorporation with third party rostering systems Both the backup landline and iConnect system are purposely designed to be controlled together with third party rostering systems plus applications from advanced set. Advanced Conduit is an API setting that offers ready incorporation with external systems. It adopts numerous connectivity methods to accommodate combination with third party systems of various technical sophistication and design. The current combination exists with several third applications that include Peapleplanner, ISS, iCareHealth, Coldharbour and Carefree. Change Management One of the major challenges that are related to delivering mobile ECM is associated with the introduction of fundamental change to a huge and uncomplicated labor force. Therefore, it is critical that the workers understand the applications that they are given; these applications must use plain English and be supported by adequate handling across the application and the telephony (Information for care everywhere, 2012). iConnect was designed specifically for care workers and it has not been translated or anglicized from a lorry tracking scheme or other logistic applications. Therefore, it becomes sensible to care workers and the adoption or training is highly simple. Naturally, a percentage of early queries relate to airtime and handset issues as opposed to items that are related to solutions. Advanced is an exclusive in running mobile communications business meant to address this condition. Summary and conclusion iConnect is a major constituent of advanced mobile suite. It is written for the purpose of managing care workers in Advance care Inc. The business drivers for ECM are to deliver billing and contracts. The iConnect eliminates effort and danger and ensures that there is fulfillment. In the homecare environment, absolute proof of presence inside the service user’s home is critical. Therefore, iConnect uses NFC tagging as the main proof of position. Strengths of the iConnect The following are its advantages: It is not like the ordinary GPS monitor that shows the distance that the driver has moved to or from the address. It literally uses no power and the data imparted is impossible to copy. The NFC technology does not apply any camera technology. It does not need any live connectivity like systems that are based on GPS. It does not require utilization of smart phones. Weaknesses of the iConnect The related components of the iConnect are usually subjected to penetration testing by bodies that have been externally certified. It is often quite challenign to deliver mobile ECM when a fundamental change is introduced. Workers who may not understand English, which is the language used, may have problems handling the equipment. This is because the iConnect was designed specifically for workers who understand English and not any other language. Recommendations Advanced ECM offers several billing models that cater for the various service requirements of the users in Advanced Care Inc. This advanced suite also allows any level of mix and match between its components to make sure that there is flexibility going forward as the business changes and because the product specialists spend time with the care workers, in the field. This makes them pass on the best-practice methodology to optimize this service. iConnect presents a lifetime ownership cost that is less than alternative solutions when it is combined with airtime packages that are designed to match homecare industry. References Advanced care Inc (2012). Retrieved from < http://www.advancediv.com/> Information for care everywhere (2012). Retrieved from < http://www.advancedcomputersoftware.com/ahc/hospice-end-of-life-care- register/index.php> Tuljapurkar, S., Ogawa, N., & Gauthier, A. H. (2010). Ageing in advanced industrial states. Heidelberg: Springer Verlag. Tuljapurkar, S., Ogawa, N., & Gauthier, A. H. (2010). Ageing in advanced industrial states. Heidelberg: Springer Verlag. Read More