Impact of Information Systems on Business Processes - Case Study Example

PROBLEM WITH THE INFECTION CONTROL PROCESS:

The analysis of the existing Infection Control Process of the healthcare organization resulted in the identification of the following problems or issues (Christian and Fischer, 563):

• There was a lack of synchronization in the existing Infection Control process of the organization. The reports about the diseases related to infections were only created in the afternoon. Hence the Infection Control Practitioners were able to identify infections on the mornings of the next weekday which resulted in slowing the process as the next step in the Infection Control process was dependent on the generation of these reports.
• The existing Infection Control Process was not using any information technology. The analysis of the current process reflected that the process was inefficient because of the fact that no information technology tool or method by the Infection Control Practitioners was being used after receiving the infection reports.
• The Infection Control Process was taking longer time because of different tasks which were being done manually. The reports and the patient charts were reviewed manually as the reports about infections were printed. Analysis of the Infection Control Process revealed that around 30 percent of the time of the Infection Control Practitioners was taken by the process of screening important reports and documents.
• Another issue with the existing Infection Control process was the involvement of the Infection Control Practitioners in the overall notification activities. The main role in controlling the infections is of the Infection Control Practitioners, but they were not directly involved in the Infection Control process.

IMPROVEMENT OF THE INFECTION CONTROL PROCESS AND THE ROLE OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS IN THE PROCESS OF IMPROVEMENT:

As it was difficult to alter the abilities and capacities of the personnel involved in the whole infection control process, the focus during improvement was on the issue of lack of synchronization in the process of notifying about infections and the follow-up process. By improving synchronization between the two processes it was able to reduce the time involved in the whole process. During the process of improvement, a whole new workflow was developed to support the Infection Control process (Christian and Fischer, 564).

The notification part of the Infection Control process was not changed in the new proposal. In the proposal of a new model of the Infection Control process, it was suggested that the link between the process of notification and the follow-up process should be made more open and explicit. As a result, the processes of notification and follow-up were integrated together so that the follow-up process started instantly after the process of notification about infectious diseases. This allowed to reduce the overall time consumed by the Infection Control process.

Apart from this, it was suggested to use information technology and systems in order to eliminate the excessive manual work. The whole process of follow-up was streamlined so that there should be proper automation because of the utilization of workflow. For this automation, WFMS was integrated with the process. The Infection Control practitioners were able to directly access Soarain along with other IT support. This all contributed to minimizing the requirement for manual activities.

The use of information systems in the process allowed a larger margin of improvement because of more automation of work which in turn resulted in a reduction of time consumed in the overall Infection Control process.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FURTHER IMPROVEMENT AND BUSINESS PROCESS REENGINEERING:

The new Infection Control process resulted in improving the quality and performance of the process considerably, but there is still more room for improvement. There are several factors which if modified will result in providing more efficient results. Apart from other changes, one beneficial option is business process reengineering or improvement. This can be possible through the integration of more players in the overall Infection Control process. The current operation of the laboratory to call floor can be automated with an additional workflow in the Infection Control process. Apart from this several other follow-up tasks can also be integrated into the overall process (Christian and Fischer, 568).

In this way, the hospital will be able to improve the safety measures for the patients and will help in the reduction of infections that can be prevented. But at the same time, there will be different challenges and issues which have to be faced by hospitals. It will require extensive training of the current staff and Infection Control Practitioners so that they are able to use the new technology and systems in an effective and efficient way. Apart from this, it is important to keep in consideration that this kind of change can trigger resistance on the part of the staff and employees of the hospital as they will be reluctant to learn new technology and processes.