The Diffusion And Value Of Healthcare Information Technology - Research Paper Example

The Diffusion And Value Of Healthcare Information Technology Abstract: Hospitals are one of the most important functional entities in the human civilization. It is basically for the betterment of the human being. However, on the other hand it is one of the most promising businesses in the present time. It is very important to understand why the Information Technology and software are required in the hospitals. Hospitals are the entities where the margin of error should be minimized as any cost. And for the repetitive works in the hospitals the manual system may incur many errors as humans are not machines and the efficiency level of a person depends on many factors. The business is looking to generate more patients in shorter time and the implementation of the IT is the only function to be done to get the ultimate satisfactory results. From the business prospective the implementation of IT would lower the cost and it would increase the efficiency. However there are many problems are involved such as compatibility of the software with the existing system, durability of the software etc. In most of the hospitals the management has accepted the implementation of the IT. One of the main technological issues is the life span of the software and the technology. However, the continuous advancement of the technology is reducing the life span of a specific software solution the acceptance of the IT in hospitals a increasing gradually for the betterment of the hospitals for the long term benefits. Introduction: Information technology and the software have emerged as the boon to the each and every industry nowadays. The working through manual methods is gone. The new age working methods are done through software. The implementation of the software and information technology has given a tremendous opportunity to the industries. It is cost effective, time saving and supportive to the total quality management (TQM). For the hospitals and nursing homes the TQM is very much important and the maintenance of the patient’s database is also one of the vital factors to be monitored and maintained properly. Most of the developed countries in the world are health conscious and they are very much serious about the healthcare units and, they spend huge amount of funds to improve the present status. USA and UK are among the top spending countries over the healthcare. They are implementing centralized software based technology to improve the system. These software are getting used in maintaining new and existing patient’s database, in reporting system, in security and housekeeping, accounting and finance and definitely on emergency services. The blessing of the software and technology has shown the new path towards the improvement of the healthcare industry. The aim of the project: The new concept in the hospital management is to practice the traditional approach with the proper blending of the software and information technology. The aim of this paper is to find out the aspects of the implementation of the information technology and the software to explore the new business opportunities in the health care sector. On the other hand the focus is also given on the nullifying the threats and drawback related to the software implementation in the hospitals and nursing homes to maintain the TQM. Statement of the Business Scenario: The health care industry is basically a service oriented industry and in this kind of industry the physical evidence of the services is very much important as the service is an intangible product which can be felt after buying it. Nowadays, most of the customers are having great deal of information to select the best service provider. Consumers have great deal of information about the cost and quality about the services provided by the hospitals. They use information to get the best value against the price. (Blair 47) The new trend in the hospital industry is to provide low cost and high value services. They tend to follow the innovative approach to provide maximum information about the services towards the prospective customers. There are many issues such as problems, opportunities and threats are juxtaposed due to the implementation of the information technology and software in the healthcare sectors. The problems related to the Health Care industry: There are many problems exist in the health care units, and they are the attrition rate of the employees, continuous changing technology in the medical industry, the short life cycle of the medical services and technology and many more. It is very true that, Information Technology can be a primary contributor towards the advancement of the medical science and the medical industry. It reduces the cost, it respond to managed care, it helps to develop a continuum of care and obviously it improves the quality of the services. However, on several contexts the health care industry struggle with their organizations use of and commitment to Information Technology. (Glaser XV). The aggregate funding for the implementation of the software and Information Technology is always been a staggering number, it is of thousands of millions of Dollars. For this reason some organizations hesitate to implement these high-end technologies. The adoption of the new age technology has proven to be beneficial towards the improvement of the industry. However, it has been found that hospitals lag behind the other industries by ten to fifteen years in term of information technology adoption. (McClean, Millard and El-Darzi 149). There is another problem, according to the Advanced Medical Technology Association 2007, the medical technology improvement and innovation is consist of the incremental improvement of the existing technology hence forth the product life cycle of this particular sector is ranging from eighteen months to two years. (Olsen, et al 188). This short life cycle is another big problem for the implementation of the IT in health care. The opportunity: The opportunities are always there in the market, it needs to be found in a proper time with proper prospective. It has been seen that funding is one of the big problems in the implementation of the IT and software in health care, but, the funding towards health care is pretty high as far as the United States of America is concern. According to National Health Expenditure Statistics, 2004, the United States has spent fifteen percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on health care in 2002. (Bower 1). This huge spending represents the highest ever spending for health care in the world for a single country in a single sector. (Bower 1). The introduction of IT was late in the health care sector but, it is improving in a rapid pace. The opportunity is tremendous as the funding is always there and the support from the government is also there. With the help of the proper IT and software installation the specific hospital would get more consumers, as through the proper implementation of the new age technology the prospective consumers would get more information about the services and the products provided by the hospital. This would help the organization to show the supremacy over the competitors. It should be remembered that more customer means more revenue and most of the revenue comes from the loyal existing customer as far as the service industry is concern. The threat: Threat is something which is a part of any industry. Without threat the up gradation or improvement is not possible. One of the biggest threats in the health care sector is the short life span of the existing technology. It is very expensive to implement the software and IT in the health care system but the technology is ever changing and the recurring cost to maintain the IT and Software implementation is very high. In this era the real mantra for the successful business is to provide high quality services in low price. And the substitute services need to be kept intact every time as the technology is changing every days and the competition has become a great threat for the organizations in the health care sector. It is very important for the organizations in the oligopolistic market to improve their position in the competitive market to reduce the threats. (Shortell et al, 468). Analysis of the Organizations and Business Processes: The health care sector is the sector which is basically the service oriented industry and it is very unlike the other industry. In the other industry the business process runs through the distributors and many other third party business bodies. And in those industries the manufacturer never interacts with the end user of the products. But in case of hospitals and nursing homes the service providers of the employees of the organization directly interact with the patients or with the family members of the patients. These kinds of interactions are complex and critical as the deep emotions and frequently involved as a result of difficult health issues related to the patient. In these kinds of interactions most of the time the employee gets involved in financially pressurized conditions. The consumers pressurize the hospital employees due to the high cost for the critical treatments. (Rybaczyk 212). There are several factors and several departments and several wards are involved in a health care sector. The different departments are accounting department, Customer relation department, Public Relation department, health insurance department, reporting department for patient and employees, security department, housekeeping department and many more. In other hand the different wards are emergency ward, child care ward, critical illness ward, maternity ward etc. All of these departments and wards are interconnected with each other for the smooth operation of the hospital. The information technology and the integrated software play a vital role to provide a centralized system which shares all the information and data among all the departments. There are some major issues which are very much important in the health care sector. Few of the major issues are handling the patient or members of the patient’s family, reporting time and process for the consumers, handling the emergency patient in reduced time duration, health insurance, TQM, database management, employee satisfaction and lowering the attrition rate and obviously customer loyalty programs to retain the customers. All of these issues have different problems with different solutions. The major problem faced by the health or the medical industry is the incremental changes in the advancement of the medical technology. The amount of money involved in the technological advancement is huge. It is a lump sum amount of spending done by the hospital organizations to keep up with the pace of the fast advancement in the medical technology. The average life cycle for the medical technology is very small, these is always an alternative process available in the hospital for most of the treatments. It means if one technology goes obsolete then the other can be applied at the same time. The maintenance cost of these hospitals is very high. However, in the era of information technology the cost cutting is possible and that is the reason most of the hospitals are focusing on providing high end services with low cost as the price competition is very prominent in the market. One of the biggest problems in the hospital industry is the threat rising from the substitute products and services. The movement toward the unbundling of the health services in the hospitals such as vital services like ambulatory surgery and high tech diagnostic procedure is an example of substitution creating activity. However, most of the hospitals have given their manpower and the financial support to practice these changes for the betterment of the service quality. (Shortell and Kaluzny 467). Managing the customer relation is another important. In most of the cases the customers are very much sensitive and mostly in the critical cases they pressurize the employees to lower the cost. It is one of the big challenges for the hospitals to understand the emotional attachment as well as the financial part at the same time. It means they have to tackle the nagging patient’s family for the reduction of the treatment cost in a very systematic manner so the consumer is not hurt and at the same time the sales is also done. The old traditional customers are gone these days. Today, a customer holds much information to choose the best product at a lower price. So, convincing a customer is not that easy nowadays and mostly in service oriented industry it is really tough. Maintaining a strong relation with the prospective clients is very important for the betterment of the business. The proper CRM (Customer Relation Management) should be practiced within the organization. The best customer relation can be maintained with the help of trust and commitment. (Schafer 14). To maintain a lingering relation with the customer some value addition is required only selling of product does not fetch the loyalty of the customers. There are some points to be remembered as the most important facts and they are details of the transactions made by the customer. That is, the history of the purchase details. Customer contact should be recorded and filed properly and the customer care department should be in touch with the clients. Customer preferences should be given a great importance. These are few of the facts which should be maintained to get a proper customer relation for a longer time. (Brink & Berndt 33-34). There are many CRM software are available in the market to practice proper customer relation. The CRM (Customer Relation Management) is basically the process through which a business or an organization can analyzes its prospective customers and their needs and make changes accordingly to the marketing strategy to upgrade the sales and the customer satisfaction. (Shanmugasundaram 245). In hospitals the CRM is very important part of the business strategy for managing the customers and provide then long term services. Building relation with the customer is easy but maintaining them is not so easy. CRM plays a vital role to maintain the relation in a systematic way. CRM is basically the combination of Supplier Relationship management (SRM) and Process Relationship Management (PRM). The effectiveness of CRM depends upon the satisfaction level of the customer and the customized services for which the customer is ready to pay the money. (Shanmugasundaram 245). The effective CRM plays a vital role to research and analyze the capital investment decision which is not possible by the internal operating system of the hospital. The CRM acts as the overall solutions to maintain the customer relation, to create a strong physician-patients relation within the hospital, it also helps to retain the valuable customers. The CRM can be used to improve the interactive factions of the website to know the recent trends in the industry and also to interact with the customer from the remote areas. (Kostkova 26). The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) started on May 2005. Two years ago that is in 2008, the ECDC decided to adopt Microsoft CRM as the information technology product used to create country information database. In ECDC the CRM software is used to handle the customer relation and handle other processes and it used to store information about the customers and the partners. All the information in the system is both entered and access by the staffs from the different departments in different units. It is great success for the ECDC as it is easy to implement and it connects with all the other applications such as Microsoft Word, Excel, SharePoint and any other SQL (Sequential Query Language) database. (Kostkova 27). Today the CRM has become one of main or rather the main functional entity in the hospital management. The CRM provides the complete set of functionalities which include the tracking the mail, contacts ownership and update processes, integration with the in-house systems such as identity management, epidemic intelligence information system, threat tracking tools, web portal, document management system and many more. The health insurance is another important factor in the health care industry. The proper collaboration with the health insurance companies can fetch more number of patients in the hospital. The percentage of the health industry worker in America was fifty three point seven percent among the overall work force of the country. The Wal-Mart is the largest employer in the USA. However it has been criticized for failing to provide health insurance to their many employees. (Patel and Rushfsky 197). This is a big challenge for the hospital industry as the number of prospective patients’ increases with the advancement of the health insurance sector. However, there are many people are there who have their own medical insurance. Analysis of the Requirements for a Solution to the Business Scenario: The business scenario in the health care sector is very critical in case of the cost effectiveness. The rising cost of the health treatment is a big problem for the consumer as well as for the industry itself. The rapid increasing cost of the health care industry along with the demand of the high quality services by the consumers has given a big challenge to the health care industry. To maintain the optimal balance between the cost and the quality service, most of the hospitals are getting accustomed with the use of the information technology. The IT helps to automate the clinical care operation and also the associative administrative functions. There are many positive aspects of the implementation of the information technology in the hospital management. Among its other functions it is being used to store electronic medical records, order management, result reporting system, patient care management and also the internet access to the patients for the consultation, it runs the automated billing system and also accounting and financial management system to create an integrated system in the hospital for the complete solution. According to the US GAO (Government Accountability Office) report October 2003, the GAO found that the ten health care delivery organizations found thirteen examples of saving cost by the usage of the information technology in the health care. This includes the reduction of cost associated with the medication errors, communication and documentations of the clinical care and the final test result, staffing and paper storage and obviously processing information. There are many other benefits are also monitored and they are improved quality of care, improved reporting system, more accurate and complete digital medical documentation, more accurate information about the codes and charges, improved communication process among the hospital staff and the patients. (GAO 2). The GAO 2003 had given many examples of cost related and other benefits from the use of the information technology. Few of them are cited bellow. 1. A teaching hospital reported that it has realized the savings of around eight point six million dollars annually after they had replaced the manual outpatient medical chart to the electronic medical records. (GAO 2) 2. An integrated healthcare delivery system has shown improvement in diabetes control for its patients with diabetes. (GAO 2). 3. A rural community hospital had prevented the administration over one thousand and two hundred wrong drugs using the advanced bar code technology. (GAO 2). 4. A hospital had reported a decrease in the average length of the patients stay in the hospital from seven days to five days due to the improved information technology implementation in the hospital. (GAO 2). 5. An integrated health care delivery system reported fifty three percent decrease in the claims rejected due to eligibility check during the registration period. (GAO 2). 6. An insurance company reported that the implementation of the information technology had improved the clinical care to its member through the health screening reminder program. (GAO 2). The Institute of Medicine, Deloitte Research, and other monitoring organization have reported that in one hand the health care is an information intensive industry but, in other hand it is very much fragmented and inefficient in comparison to the other industries. The monitoring the patients in the hospitals and nursing homes are very much important. In the long term care, Intensive care unit (ICU), Coronary care unit (CCU) the proper monitoring technology is required. This facility is only possible to deliver in a long term aspects if the proper involvement of the medical professionals and the nurses are practiced in a professional manner. The health monitoring required a proper technology with can identify the critical condition of the patient and it can raise an alarm to the hospital authority automatically. The signal system may relate with the drop of blood pressure, heart rate, temperature, ECG and other health related information. There is another important factor to be monitored that how often the monitoring of vital alarm system should be done? The implementation of the IT in the long term hospital care is not only for the hospital organization it should be remembered the proper usage of the system should be explained to the patient also. It is the right of the patient to know how the information are fed into the system and how to raise the alarm. The health monitoring system run by the wireless and mobile network includes the use of wearable, portable or mobile devices. There are many usability issues involved in the system. The comfort level of the patient and the trust should be addressed by the system. There are many patients including the mentally challenged are likely to be monitored regularly to understand the improvement. (Varshney 93). The health care IT innovation can only be successful if it is practiced in a proper manner. Simulation environments provides a partial solution, many developed countries in the world have these simulation procedure, emergency response, crisis management system and advanced communication systems in the hospitals. The simulation centers are very much important as they offer high level of experience in new devices and simulation. (Westbrook and Coiera 7). Discussion of Health Care Application Systems’ Solutions: There are many new healthcare application systems are available in the health industries nowadays. Most of the advanced and developed hospitals and the health care units are practicing the advanced IT implementation in the health care application. The National health Information Infrastructure could provide a platform for the installation of the new technologies related to the reporting system or the advanced communication process. One of the advanced communication processes is the wireless integrated Microsystems, this system would enable the remote capture and the effective communication of patients. In the long term in this system the real time sensors involved in the system would create a improved connectivity between the patient and the health care providers. The wireless links could be the great help in the health care industry. According to the recent study the research and development should be followed in the following matters. (Reid et al; 75) 1. Human Information/ communication technology interfaces. 2. Voice recognition systems. 3. The software that improves the connectivity among different vendors of the hospital. 4. The implementation of the system that spread the costs among multiple users. 5. The study of software dependability in the systems critical to health care delivery. 6. The usage of secure, dispersed, multi-agent database that meet the needs of both the patients and the service provider. 7. The measurement of the impact of the information technology on the improvement of the quality of the productivity for the long term. The implementation of the digital reporting and data collection system is the latest trend in the hospital industry. It is been proven that the digital data collection procedure reduces the error as well as it provides perfect solution in much more proper manner than the manual form. A hospital has currently researched on the impact of the digital data collecting systems. This particular study was performed by the direct observation of the six thousand individual medication administrations before and after installation of the bar code/ eMAR. After the study the transcription error rates were decreased by fifty percent. (Medication Use: A Systems Approach to Reducing Errors 112). In most of the hospitals the important factors to be focused on are, database management system, advanced communication system, accounting system and reporting system. For each and every factors involved in the hospitals different software are used. For the hospitals it is very important to identify the required software as there are several software are available in the market. But all may not work in the existing system and to modify the whole system to run particular software would cost a lot of investment. Even after the modification sometimes the software does not run in a proper manner and that leads to a waste of time as well as waste of money. However, wise selection would give the ultimate comfort to the hospital industry for a long term. This is very important to understand why hospitals are required software for the long term solutions. First of all the hospitals don’t have any department which develop custom made software. Secondly the hospitals need a solution which will act as the real-time problem solver to dilute the patient traffic in a systematic manner. Hospitals should select the software packages very carefully as they don’t have any full time programmer who would modify the system according to the software packages. There are some preliminary steps to be followed by the hospitals to implement the software and the IT. The followings are the starting points for the lonf term implementation of the suitable software and IT. 1. There are many important factors are involved in the selection process of the software. And they are the size of the user group, frequency of the repetitive works to be automated, volume of database, specific goal and the future prospects etc. it is needless to say that software are written and indexed according to the industry need. 2. Calculating the sophistication level is required for the hospital. Step by step advancement is required. Ultra advanced technology is also available but for small or single branch hospitals these software may create a big problem as the software won’t support the existing system. 3. The proper documentation is required for the software to work in systematic manner. 4. The future requirements should be noted down. 5. Networking facility is one of the first job to be done properly for the support of the software. 6. Comparison of the cost effectiveness with the other software should be done wisely. If all of these points followed in a systematic manner then the hospital may get software which would give the ultimate success for the longer time. (Kunders 177). Recommended Solution and Implementation Issues: The global health industry is going through major changes. The continuous advancement in the information technology in the field of the health care has given tremendous opportunities to the upcoming health care industry. Everyday loads of software are developed for the advancement of the health care industry. The ERP (Enterprise resource planning) has given tremendous opportunities in the field of health care and hospital management. The suitable ERP would solve all the problems in the hospitals as they connect the entire department in the hospital in a systematic manner. The financial accounting is one f the main functional area in the hospitals and the advanced tally system helps the hospital to maintain the financial and accounting information to bring out the ultimate result. ERP is a system which runs the whole system in a uniform manner. As all the other departments are related internally by the ERP so a small mistake can be detected very easily. There is another program which are getting practiced in the health industry is the Health Care Collaborative Network system. This system addresses the problems related to the inefficient exchange of information between service providers and the insurers. This particular solution provides a foundation for the detection of the health care events. It particularly creates a network that helps to enable the private and secure data transmission of the health care information. This application also helps in improving the facility and the quality of the health care services. There are many other applications are there which are very much important as far as the improvement of the hospitals are concern. Few of them are healthcare patient-centric portal, healthcare clinical decision intelligence, healthcare payer service portal, healthcare health plan administration and obviously the fast insurance cover facilities. Conclusion: This is to conclude that the importance of the information technology is inevitable and it cannot be ignored, but somehow the implementation of the IT is very much expensive and sometimes it reduces the employment opportunities. However, the implementation of the information technology is Very much obvious, but the better training is required for the best outcome and it should be remembered that the proper balance between the financial relief and employment opportunity should be maintain for the acceptance of the IT in broader prospective in the field of health care for the long term. References Blair John D. (2007) Strategic Thinking & Entrepreneurial Action in the Health Care Industry. Bingley: Emerald Group Publishing Bower Anthony G. (2005). The diffusion and value of healthcare information technology. California: Rand Corporation Brink A & Berndt A. (2009) Relationship Marketing and Customer Relationship Management. Claremont: Juta and Company Ltd GAO, (2003). 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Patel Kant, Rushefsky Mark E. (2006). Health care politics and policy in America. New York: M.E. Sharpe Reid Proctor P et al; (2005) “Building a better delivery system: a new engineering/health care partnership” Washington: National Academies Press. Rybaczyk Peter (2004) Cisco network design solutions for small-medium businesses. Indiana: Cisco Press Schafer M. (2007) The Importance of Customer Relationship Management in the Automotive Supply Industry. Munich: GRIN Verlag Shanmugasundaram (ed.), S Shanmugasundaram. (2008) Customer Relationship Management: Modern Trends And Perspectives. New Delhi: PHI. Shortell Stephen M., and Kaluzny Arnold D. (1997). Essentials of health care management. New York: Cengage Learning. Varshney Upkar (2009). “Pervasive Healthcare Computing: EMR/EHR, Wireless and Health Monitoring” New York: Springer. Westbrook Johanna and Coiera enrico W. (2007). “Information technology in health care 2007: proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Information Technology in Health Care: Socio-Technical Approaches”. Amsterdam: IOS Press. Appendix A Strategic Information Systems Grid BUSINESS CHALLENGES: MANAGEMENT ISSUES: INFORMATION SYSTEMS SOLUTIONS: TECHNOLOGY ISSUES: BUSINESS BENEFITS: ORGANIZATION ISSUES: Appendix B Comparison of Solutions Objectives Weight of Objective Option 1 Build Community on Yahoo Option 2 Establish own Internet Site Option 3 Pilot Community at CIGNA.com Avoid Privacy/ Security Risk .20 Low Medium High Full Automation .25 Low High Medium Ease of Implementation .10 High Medium Medium Ease of Use .20 Low High Medium Cost .15 Low Medium Medium Read More