Management of Information System - Engentre District Hospital - Case Study Example

Student name Instructor name Course Assessment title Project name Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Report Content 3 Company Background 3 Brief Company History 3 Vision 3 Mission 3 Information Systems Strategy 4 Features of the Organization 5 End Users 5 Current System 6 Problem Definition 6 Features 7 Enterprise Application 8 Business Process Redesign 9 Stages of business process redesign 9 Flow chart of steps of business process redesign 9 Recommendations and Conversion 10 Works cited 10 Report Content Company Background Brief Company History Engentre District Hospital is one of the oldest district hospitals in one of the nations in the southern part of Africa. Having been established in the early 1930s with a bed capacity of 26 as one of the most valued hospital in the nation, Engentre District Hospital has a history of its own in terms of its growth over time. It was specifically built in order to serve the colonial masters in that nation at that time. This has since changed with the hospital now serving all sorts of people in the country. It has grown over time and over 80 years down the line, it now has a bed capacity of 2,500 with just about 8,000 staff members serving in its various departments. Its Management Information System is however wanting (at least from my own perspective) and this is what this paper intends to revolve around. Vision To become the leading international health provider based in the county with a purpose of providing adequate, timely as well as high quality healthcare services in the country. Mission To promote proper professionalism, integrity, courtesy empathy at work in the course of saving humanity through provision of better healthcare that is tailor-made for all potential clients from all quarters of the world. Information Systems Strategy The health department, surgical services department, technical services department and finance department uses oracle information systems. Human resource department and suppliers system uses ERP management information system in its applications. Oracle provides information to departmental heads to spot trends. The information system utilizes PeopleSoft Health care scorecard to provide information. There is real time consolidation and delivery of information to respective departments. There is also people soft Workforce which provides additional human resource metrics. The human resource department metrics include compensation ratio. The supply department uses the PeopleSoft supplier rating systems to add metrics which will make suppliers to be efficient (Feuerstein, pg.45). Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is a management information system which is used in finance department, and supplies department. It provides real time tracking of business processes. It tracks hospital resources including cash, production capacity, orders, and payroll and purchase orders in a hospital setting. There is sharing of data in finance suppliers and sales department as there is connection between stake holders. Engentre District Hospital employs an information system where each department so-to-speak has its own information system separately. The key departments at the hospital include the Health Department, Surgical Services Department, Pharmaceutical & Nutrition Department, Technical Services Department, Finance Department, Personnel Department and the Supplies Department. Each of these departments has its own information system that apparently runs entirely on its own. With regard to this, there is Supplies Information System, Technical Services Information System, Pharmaceutical & Nutrition Information System, Surgical Services Information System, Personnel Information System, Finance Information System and the Health Information System. Features of the Organization Judging from the various departments outlined above, it is evident that Engentre District Hospital is involved in the provision of a variety of healthcare services. Its key features are that it provides treatment for a variety of diseases, surgical services where needed as well as pharmaceutical and nutrition services to patients. Like it was mentioned in the Brief Company History, Engentre District Hospital now has a bed capacity of 2,500 and has a total number of employees of 8,000. Its staff members include the top management i.e. administration, middle level management i.e. departmental heads, low level management i.e. supervisory staff and the general staff. End Users I would like to propose a slightly different kind of Management Information System for Engentre District Hospital whose end users shall be the clients themselves, all levels of management, the subordinate staff as well as the external partners e.g. suppliers of the hospital requirements. In this new system, all functions are decentralized which therefore means that managers shall be able to monitor their various areas of jurisdiction from one platform, patients will be able to learn about the operations of the hospital without necessarily physically making an inquiry, suppliers too will not need to necessarily be present for them to link with the hospital and the subordinate staff as well will be in a position to know all the progress reports of the operations of the hospital (Bellgran,pg.89). Current System The current system as it is may be good, yes, but certainly not efficient enough as to streamline the operations of the hospital. As was lightly mentioned in the Information Strategy section, the various departments have their own Information System. These Information Systems are purely capable of managing information and data specifically for their respective department. Each of these departments’ information is managed independently and as it is, a departmental head is only tasked with knowing what is going on in his/ her area of jurisdiction with very little regard to what is happening in the other departments("Learning Zone—MIS: Time to plunge into automated systems” 2). Problem Definition Having studied the Management Information System of Engentre District Hospital for some time now (especially after seeking for their healthcare services on several occasions), it has actually come to my notice that the system is virtually ineffective. How? In a functional organizational setting, coordination of activities in the various departments is an important factor to consider as far as that organization’s growth is concerned. Each department of this hospital has its own Information Management System that shows the flow of information within that particular department. The problem however is that none of these departmental Management Information Systems is linked to a common platform in which all the information from all sections of the hospital can be collectively managed under one centre (Bellagran, pg.89)).As a result of this, there has been poor quality of information, duplication of information as well as absence of consistency amongst departments. Another major problem with this kind of system is the little integration between information systems which eventually causes a direct competition amongst the various Management Information Systems of the hospital. You and I know very well that coordination amongst departments in any organization is critical for the success of that particular organization and Engentre District Hospital is no exception in this context. For specificity purposes, a real example that I have personally experienced at Engentre District Hospital is a situation in which a patient needs medication from the hospital. As it is now, that patient will have to first and foremost see the doctor in order to get prescriptions before s/he can then proceed to the finance department to pay for those prescribed drugs. It is only after that that the patient can then go to the pharmaceutical department to obtain the drugs that s/he has paid for. Now, this seems a tedious process since these three departments are totally autonomous. If only there existed a coordinated system where these departments can share information amongst themselves, then the story would definitely be different. Features In the new model that I propose, the key foundational difference shall be the integration of departments so that they are centrally managed by one mega information system. The key characteristic of my new proposed Management Information System is the use of a centralized system to manage all these information systems under one platform. In this new system, information is managed within the organization departments as well as between the departments and the central Management Information System (Hansen, pg45). Compared to the current system, this new system allows for both intradepartmental as well as interdepartmental flow of information within the organization. Enterprise Application This new proposed Management Information System is intended to have an impact in four major applications i.e. Knowledge Management System (KNS), Enterprise Resourcing (ER), Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Supply Chain Management (SCM) as discussed below: In CRM, the integrated system will help to create a positive image to the hospital’s clients due to the reduced cases of bureaucracy in the hospital operations. Customers (patients in this case) spend very little time in obtaining the hospital services. In SCM, this new system seeks to encourage suppliers of hospital equipments and drugs to work with the hospital due to the reduced duration of time it shall take them to handle transactions with Engentre District Hospital. The new proposed system will impact on the KMS in such a way as to allow for easy access to hospital documents and solutions by the hospital staff easily. Through this, new ideas shall be encouraged for improvement in service delivery. With the new proposed information system, it will be easier to plan for the allocation of resources (ER) to various departments since they (departments) will be monitored centrally and therefore easy to budget (Bellagran, pg. 67). Business Process Redesign The four processes of business process redesign are automation, rationalization of the procedure, business process redesign and paradigm shifts. Business process redesign evaluates the effectiveness and efficiency of critical processes. There is automation of operational data with the aid of detailed processes. Automation aids to safeguard integrity of the system. Stages of business process redesign Flow chart of steps of business process redesign The first stage involves development of business objectives, vision and processes. This is followed with objective identification of process to be designed. This involves shift from manual to automatic systems .understanding and measurement of existing processes will aid to determine effective shift to automatic systems. New information technology levers will be identified to assist in the shift to automatic systems rather than the manual systems. The last stage involves designing and building of process prototype. Recommendations and Conversion There is need to built internal controls into manual systems as the initial stage of system procedures. The internal controls are supposed to be many. The internal controls will e automated as business system software. Information reports will be useful I the shift. For instance, purchase orders andanalysis of line rejection which do occur in the appropriate transactions (Hansen, pg.67). Works cited Bellagran, Monica, and Kristina Säfsten. Production Development: Design and Operation of Production Systems. London: Springer, 2010. Feuerstein, Steven, and Bill Pribyl. Oracle Pl/sql Programming. Sebastopol, Calif: O'Reilly, 2014. Hansen, Gregory A. Automating Business Process Reengineering: Using the Power of Visual Simulation Strategies to Improve Performance and Profit. Upper Saddle River, N.J: Prentice Hall, 2007 Wezel, Wout , Rene Jorna, and A Meystel. Planning in Intelligent Systems: Aspects, Motivations, and Methods. Hoboken, N.J: John Wiley & Sons, 2006. Read More