Information Technology in Healthcare - Case Study Example

Running Head: A Case Study of Information Technology in Healthcare. Department Information technology continues to influence revolutionise every facet of life. The advent of the internet particularly has had a lasting impact in terms of altering the way business is done. One area that continues to benefit from technological advances in terms of equipment, communication and access to information is the healthcare sector. Today a number of administrative information technology (IT) programs for the healthcare sector are accessibly available even though implementation and uptake has been low paced. Today the healthcare sector benefit from programs such as software for inventory management, billing and scheduling thanks to the IT advancement. Improvements can also be noted in the areas of healthcare informatics, Clinical Decisions Support Systems and Electronic Health Records (EHRs). A widespread notion has been that implementation of IT in healthcare has been considerably low paced has led to an increase in calls for government agencies to improve on the area. In this paper I will be looking at healthcare from the perspective of IT and how IT has impacted care delivery. There is no doubt that IT has already positively impacted on the way business is transacted in the entire industry of healthcare. Healthcare organizations in both the private and public sectors are increasingly taking up IT in the aim of modernising and improving efficiency & quality of healthcare services delivery as well as improve the management of healthcare information. The implication of this has been an increasingly growing demand professionals in healthcare to acquire more skills that will enable them effectively apply the new and ever evolving healthcare technologies (Miller & Sim, 2004). The trend is expected to continue and as such the scope, speed and magnitude of IT uptake in the healthcare sector will intensify further. The barrier that exists between healthcare professionals and the public in terms of healthcare information will be broken by new technologies such as social media. A growing need for access to evidence-based approaches to healthcare delivery, effective transactions and the need for constant contact between professionals and clients is bound to revalorise traditional healthcare-patient relationships tremendously. Another area healthcare that is experiencing great evolution as a result of IT adoption is the manner in which patients and the general public accesses receive and evaluates healthcare information. To understand and address the magnitude and impact of changes occurring in healthcare delivery as well as the contribution information communication technologies requires multidisciplinary data structures as well as programs. The influence of IT is irresistible and healthcare IT will continue to play a fundamentally revolutionising role in the sector. For individuals and organisations to remain competitive and relevant in the modern healthcare situation then adopting the changes coming about as a result of IT is inevitable. IT promises a great potential in terms of improving quality, efficiency and safety in the way healthcare services are delivered. Even with the slow paced diffusion of Information Technologies in healthcare, research has shown that healthcare care will continue to increase investment in IT for healthcare delivery. Major driving forces for IT in health services include the promise of improving both the quality and efficiency aspects of service. The main barriers on the other hand surround the aspects of costs and complexity that comes with implementation of IT; these in many cases necessitate changes in terms of organisational culture and workflow processes. Some characteristics of the market for healthcare such as policies of payment that reward volumes at the expense of quality as well as the fragmented nature of the system could also pose significant barriers to the adoption of IT in healthcare. However, going by the potential that IT promises in terms of improving efficiency and quality of healthcare, organisations in healthcare have embarked on various efforts aimed at promoting IT usage inside and across different settings of healthcare. More efforts many include monetary incentives, increased efforts at standardizing management of records, nomenclature standards and protocols for communication so as to greatly improve interoperability. At the same time it is prudent that any policies for stimulating increased investment should be considered in a careful fashion so as to minimise the possibilities of consequences that might not be intended. Careful policy consideration will for instance eliminate failures in implementation that may result from organisational inability to more in tandem with requirements of the new IT situation in terms of making necessary cultural alterations. Care delivery requires that both providers of service and their clients who in this case are patients integrate complex information sourced from different locations. This means increasing capabilities among physicians, technicians, nurses and other professionals in healthcare to readily and easily gain access to accurate information regarding their patients will positively impact the quality care and efficiency in which care is given. This promising potential of improving the state of care further increases the desire to diffuse IT in healthcare. Research is thus needed to better the understanding of specific application that will be relevant to care improvement in the various healthcare environments as well as the necessary circumstances that promote the success of implementation. Available information from current studies has shown that certain technologies could improve healthcare but the amount of evidence is narrow. Usage of IT in healthcare is generally low as compared to other sectors of the economy but according to research, healthcare providers are increasingly investing more in IT. There are also variations in terms of extent and IT types deployed by various institutions and these variations are largely dictated by the environment. A prevalence of IT adoption in a particular setting represents the strength of factors that drive its uptake as well as the barrier to investments. In most organisations the primary driving factors surround improvements in quality and processes. In other organisation efficiency gain is the major driving force motivating investment in IT. The constant hindrance is the cost element, complexity that comes with IT implementation and uncertainties around stability in the IT industry itself. Considerable efforts can be seen in the healthcare industry among both private and public sector players promote and increase usage of IT. Some activities such as the development and promotion of standards to govern the entire industry are testimony. Other activities include financial support for research aimed at investigating quality impacts of IT in healthcare, provision of incentives to enhance more investment in Information Technology, giving monetary grants to organisations that invest in healthcare IT and the development of strategic plans for the improvement of information flow across the industry. Other actions that have the potential of promoting IT diffusion in healthcare may include making changes in the payment policies, setting up funds for grants or loans and requiring all providers to implement certain mandatory specified IT technologies. Generally IT benefits the healthcare industry by enhancing collection, storage and retrieve, and transfer of health information in an electronic form which requires less paper work. In the electronic form, information is safer, easily accessible and transferable in different healthcare settings. When procuring for IT, healthcare organisations therefore consider a number of issues that largely surround functionality so as to make their decisions. Generally, IT applications for healthcare are of three broad classes. Systems for administrative and financial application support the departments of accounts & billing as well as other tasks that are administrative in nature. Clinical systems on the other hand facilitate the real processes of care delivery while the IT infrastructure offers support for the administrative and clinical systems to enhance functionality, usability and interoperability. An area of healthcare that has benefitted greatly from IT is record management thanks to the evolution of Electronic Health Records (EHRs). Electronic were developed initially to serve as a file cabinet in the electronic form so as to enable efficient management and access to patient information from multiple sources. The technologies have improved over time and integrated new things like images, voice, text and even notes written by hand. Today EHRs are part and parcel of the entire automated system for entry of orders and tracking of patient information. Healthcare benefits include provision of real-time and efficiently easy access to all information regarding patients as well as continuous progressive records of their care. It has completely eliminated the need for paperwork with the resultant minimisation of medical errors. Computerisation of important procedures through the Clinical Decision Support System is another healthcare IT milestone. CDSS makes it conveniently possible or physicians, specialist medics, nurses and other professionals to access clinical diagnostic information and recommendations for treatment on a real-time basis. Covered under the term are different technologies which vary from the simple alerting systems and warnings of drug interaction to clinical protocols and pathways. Healthcare IT has also revolutionised the face of Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS).With the new technology it is possible to not only capture but also integrate diagnostic & radiological pictures from multiple source points. CTS, X-ray and MRI image are all integrated and stored and can be disseminated to medical records, clinical data repositories or other healthcare points depending on need. Bar coding has also been used widely in the settings of healthcare where scanners are used to capture and encode information on different products. Applications include matching medications to specific patients in an accurate manner through the electronic reading of bar codes on both the drugs as well as on patient arm bracelets. They could also useful in medical devices, laboratory and radiological results. Radio Frequency Identification (IFID) on the other hand links the tracking laboratory and medical procedures using wireless communication. Whereas RFID has not been widely used in the healthcare settings it could effectively replace bar coding. There are also the Automated Dispensing Machines which use technology to dispense medicines and thus release human capital for other duties. Healthcare providers are also increasingly turning to technology when it comes to management of materials. Electronic Materials Management (EMM) systems are used in care organisations to support the tracking and management of inventories. This way supply of medicines, movement of pharmaceuticals and other important materials are electronically managed in a fashion that is replica to the ERP systems deployed by other organizations outside the healthcare industry. Even people management is effectively done through electronic systems. Scheduling of shifts, leaves and allocation of duties have all gone electronic. This is important as it significantly releases the human from such duties and makes employees available for the more important duty of providing care to patients. Quality and Healthcare Information Technology. A major driver for the uptake of IT in healthcare is the desire to improve the quality of services offered to clients. The quality of care is to large extent dependent on ability of professionals, their patients and families to access relevant information at the right time and make use of the same information in making appropriate clinical decisions. It will be noted that health information necessary in the making of appropriate medical decisions is ever changing; new guidelines and clinical evidence continues to come up as well as the knowledge of patient and disease management which is continuously improving. The solution to this peculiar healthcare situation lies in the ability of storing, integrating and updating the information base regularly. Only IT can do this. Further to improving the state of healthcare at the level of individuals, healthcare IT also carries great potential of addressing the healthcare challenges that come as a result of the highly fragmented system of healthcare delivery. Many patients for instance receive healthcare from different care providers. Coordination is primarily through discussions with the individual patients on the services received from elsewhere and the decisions made by the other providers about their particular medical conditions. The use of IT across healthcare settings has the potential of integrating the entire system of care delivery without necessarily requiring that organisations merge. According to MedPAC (2003) improving healthcare IT is among the most crucial system changes relevant to improvement of care quality. A report on safety of patients by the institute of Medicine in the year 2000 indicated that an estimated 98,000 persons perish just in the US alone due to medical errors. In another later report the same IOM recognised IT among the four crucial forces significant to the improvement of patient safety and quality of healthcare. The powerful external force liking improved care and safety with IT led to a widespread notion that adopting IT in the realm of healthcare would positively impact on aspects of quality of patient safety. Research has found that IT can significantly serve to minimise if not eliminate errors of medication. Ways in which IT standards in healthcare can improve quality and patient are numerous. Firstly the use of IT reduces incidences of medical errors by up 55% which results in reduced cases of patients react adversely. Healthcare IT increases precision in prescription of medication and at the same time reduces errors of dosage. The accuracy of prescription by faculty and residents increases significantly where healthcare IT has been implemented (Oren et al. 2003). Bar coding for instance has been studied and found to prevent error at the bedside, minimising ambulatory as well as impatient medical errors and cases of adverse drug events. CDSS has also been found to beneficially impact on care procedures and ultimately patient outcomes. Alerting systems for instance improve orders for tests and medicines by 100% In conclusion therefore healthcare IT has been slow in harvesting capabilities of IT systems in improving healthcare outcomes in terms of quality of service, patient safety, process efficiency, communication and availability of knowledge. With the increasing complexity of modern medicine, there is no doubt will continue to increasingly play a fundamental role in improving quality. IOM noted that for any substantial healthcare improvements in the coming days, IT must inevitably play the crucial role of redesigning the entire healthcare system. The systems require re-engineering in the areas of education, financial management, culture, sociological and technical aspects. More research is therefore required to determine the role IT plays in improving decision making in clinical settings, management of information, communication well as elements of costs and healthcare access. There is also need to identity the particular factors playing the role barrier to the successful implementation healthcare IT and the strategies of overcoming the same. Solutions should also be generated to eliminate the digital divide and improve adoption. The costs and resources relevant significant to the adoption and implementation of IT applications in healthcare should also be studied as well as evaluating transferability of IT solutions across the multiple settings of healthcare delivery (Ortiz and Clancy, 2003). References. 1. Allan, J. & Englebright, J (2000). Patient-centered documentation: an effective and efficient use of clinical information systems. Journal of Nursing Administration, 30: 90-95. Print. 2. De Leon, S. et al (2010). The business end of health information technology: can a fully integrated electronic health record increase provider productivity in a large community practice? The Journal of Medical Practice Management, 25.6: 342-349. Print. 3. Edwardo Ortiz, and Carolyn M Clancy. ( 2003). Use of Information Technology to Improve the Quality of Health Care n the United States. Health Services Research. 4. Medicare Payment Advisory Commission. (2003). Report to the Congress: Variation and innovation in Medicare. Washington, DC: MedPAC. 5. Miller, R. & Sim, I (2004). Physicians’ use of electronic medical records: barriers and solutions. Health Affair, 23: 116-126. Print. 6. Oren, E., E. R. Shaffer, and B. J. Guglielmo. 2003. Impact of Emerging Technologies on Medication Errors and Adverse drug Events. American Journal of Health System Pharmacists 60, no.14: 1447–1458. Read More