Enterprise Resource Planning Systems in Health Care Sector - Term Paper Example

?Enterprise resource planning: ERP is explained as enterprise resource planning. While Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software is considered as acomplete solution to all business. The purpose and major goal of ERP software is to manage all the data related to business well all the systems included data entering and processing. ERP software is one of the most essential elements for any business especially larger firms aims to harmonize its business. Due to rising competitive pressure growth their business, capturing many markets requirement to manage the data and information is a tough job if the traditional methods were followed. So the companies from not only from corporate world but others like NGO’s, hospitals are looking forward for the perfect solution to equip with modern business processes like ERP solutions because it provides unlimited access to information and enable them to compete effectively. Some other factors that have a strong influence on the growing demand for ERP solutions are rapid increase in industrialization and increasing use of integrated legacy systems. Enterprise Resource Planning which was considered as the most critical in mid-90s when it was initially introduced has now capturing the IT market because of its effectiveness. Many companies like multinationals and having a complex and multi boundaries infrastructure are using ERP to manage effectively their records like effective resource planning, management control, and operational control. ERP is not just a piece of computer software in fact it provides a complete solution of every issue can be discussed in a company regarding management. It has completely changed the businesses scenario that is a reason number of organizations and industries are operating it is increasing day by day. In fact research shows that many organizational performances have been improved after the deployment of ERP software solutions because it covers almost every aspect of management like resource planning, management control, and operational control. ERP is so much in demand that it holds a great set of solution for every business. ERP has brought some "Valuable Competence theory" in to the world of IT. There are different kinds of companies so the requirement for management of their resources can vary according to their nature of business. Like for production companies are the ones who require this solution the most, DHL or FEDEX are an example of this control their resources by using ERP. The interesting thing about these distribution companies is they just focus on their delivering what has been produced by others. Many public services organizations especially NGO’s and hospitals are also using the ERP solution for the effective management. A significant change has been seen in health care industry by the time which has forced the hospitals to follow latest technology trends like ERP solutions for better services to their patients along with making their investment worthy. Hospitals cannot follow traditional practices and technologies. They need to update their system in terms of latest technology usage and making information transfer faster to provide better services and to their patients. An overview of the hospital: The hospital which is in study is complete working on manual system. The hospital is operating with few departments before but now expanding its services as one of the leading hospitals of the city. The hospital has started dealing in many departments like Opening services in various departments like Internal Medicine, Gynecology and Obstetrics, Anesthesiology, Pediatrics, Cardiac Surgery, Oncology, Radiology, General Surgery, Neuro Surgery and expanding its Laboratory along with a blood bank. Also the hospital is opening its services for outdoor patients too. And the patient can get the services from 9.00a.m to 5.00p.m in that department. So because of this the medical staff also increased. This enforces the management to deploy such an effective system which can effectively manages all the information and assist the employees in many ways. Suggested system: The suggested system will completely manages all the data of patients, scheduled their appointments, making schedule for doctors. Also provide them the patient’s history in one click. Assist the management in maintaining the inventory. It will work along with the Oracle ERP used in maintaining the financial department. The system will work in this way like when a patients comes at the front desk in case of old client he only need to tell his a specific code and the officer can retrieve its complete medical history and then he was asked whether he is here for the previous disease or now suffering with the new one. If he was there for his appointment then he will be asked to move to the specific department and the complete medical history will be transferred to the specific doctor. In case he has to get his tests reports then after checking the availability of that report he has been asked to take it first and then go to the concerned doctor. And if he wants to go for other treatment then the officer will check the schedule of that doctor and make an appointment of the patient in its continual record rather making another new entry in the databases. And also this appointment will be send to the specified department. In case of the new patient the officer will get the complete record and patient’s medical history and assign him a code or a patient number and then move him to the prescribed department this will work in outdoors. In case of emergency the registering process will be less time consuming by taking the patient’s medical history at the front desk and immediately transfer it to the departments like blood bank, laboratory or the medicine department so that quickly the treatment must be started. The suggested ERP will also keep the record of doctors by scheduling them perfectly also in case of any changes in the schedule the patient and the concerned department will get a notification. And the patient’s appointment will be transferred to next working day automatically. The ERP will be completely manages the attendance system for the employees and keep a complete record of their leave and collaborate with modern attendances devices. The ERP will maintain inventory too if any product is out of stock or near to expiry the concerned department will get a notification. It will work with the oracle financial services too and also generate regular, weekly reports of the inventory to make the management aware of the expenses. There are some features which are kept for future enhancements like if the hospital starts servicing to the patients having critical diseases like HIV etc then to ensure the patient privacy will be a big concern. So an effective system will be introduced so that the patient can get its reports in complete privacy like can mail that. So that if the patient is not positive he do not need to face any embarrassment or in case of positive reports without moving to all departments it is ensured that he only need to interact with the concerned doctor or department. Goals of ERP system: ERP systems by the time have earned huge popularity because of that they bring various advantages to organizations who have implemented them correctly. Implementation of ERP in healthcare industry has been increased by the time the increasing number of hospitals with the growing population and the discovery of critical diseases along with the services acquired to cure them. Nowadays providing health services to the patients is no more just an ordinary service has been practiced by following traditional ways, in fact the entire setup of health centers has now considered as a complete hospital industry. And it required for a perfect solution like ERP designed especially for the health care industry. Every hospital whether small or larger has a basic set up in terms like they have a certain medical equipments and necessary medical instruments to assist its medical staff in treating the patients. Also they have a working staff includes best physicians, paramedical staff like nurses in order to provide the claimed services. So the focus while designing the ERP system is to manage the whole operation smoothly and effectively following the professional way, so that the patients can get the best and satisfactory service from the hospital. So analyzing the specific hospital what kind of requirement and functionalities are required to full fill that are as below. Save patients time spend in waiting for the prescribed doctor of their choice. An option of advance booking should be available for the specific doctor especially in outdoors. People have the facility to use the online billing system to pay their dues in case of emergencies. Patient can have a choice of in case of admission like in maternity ward. Discharging process should not be too complex and long. Medical claim should be facilitated immediately and directly through the insurance company. Patients can get the status or schedule of their medical tests report via a message (email, text message etc). The suggested system must provide the complete integration to every department. The ERP system also provide assistance in the internal management to the administration such as Maintaining a complete schedule for Doctors' like date and time. A proper cancellation of appointments must be done or notification must be shown to every concerned person if the doctor is not available. Entry of patients on daily basis (i.e. for outdoor and indoor patients). A billing system for surgical treatments, medical treatments and diagnosis reports. Complete stock management of medicines and surgical instruments. A complete payroll system inclusion of attendance system for the staffs of the hospital. Stock management for laundry and kitchen materials. Advantages of ERP: The following benefits can be achieved if the hospital deployed an ERP solution system in like Data accuracy and preciseness: The data accuracy and preciseness is assured through this system as the system is fully automated. The data storage is done in such manner that it has a complete access and relation with the patients and their doctor along with their medical history like (prescription, reports etc), which makes any, data error free and there are less chances of making any changes or misuse of it. Instant Retrieval: Information can be retrieved and has very easy access at a very fast rate than, the manual system. Which will help effectively to save lives of patients than before when, a heavy manual work needed to be done to know about a patient history who is admitted in the hospital. Improve HRM: ERP in health care industry is very helpful in improving human resource management for maximum utilization of the valuable human capital. ERP system will provide the complete solution in form of HCM applications with relationship to the customer to ensure that every employee is responsible for his actions and play his part in the success of the organization. ERP will cover a complete solution for the hospital by providing an edge to effectively manage the skilled work and reduce any failure can occur in this department. Cost effective: With ERP human involvement is reduced, information transfer is fast and done through an automated way, complex and hectic works like scheduling and appointments can be done and managed effectively with great ease and less effort, patient record management like registration, scheduling, discharge, billing and transfer can be done in less time and in very reliable way to reduce operations cost. So enables the hospitals to utilize this money and energy on other important processes. Financial management: Financial management is another high demanding department but ERP provides innovative solutions to manage this. Like to gain maximum profit by the provision of cost cutting methods, effective management of reports at administration level, managing risks and providing a complete insight to every department. It provides an effective solution to integrate of various financial processes running in various departments of the hospitals and by this way it helps in better in financial management of on the whole to the administration. Inventory management: Inventory management is another integral department covered in the suggested ERP solution. The hospital was facing many challenges when it was using the manual system in dealing all the issues related to the inventory management was used on daily basis by the hospital staff for daily services. While the suggested ERP solutions is providing great help in maintaining inventory at every level, purchase and instrument maintenance, reordering status, checking the expiry. It is acknowledged by the experts that better inventory management helps in providing the better services to the patients and also helps in increasing profit margins by giving cautions to use the medicines etc on time etc. Information management: Prime importance of any hospital is to provide the updated information at one desk especially (front desk) in emergency cases. Like providing the information of bed availability, making or cancelling the appointments, doctors schedules, specialized and customized services and treatments providing the information about any department like the doctors are servicing in the said department and other information should be in access to the people working in this department easily and with the complete access and the suggested ERP solution ensures this by giving complete support to the front desk by their expert advice. Disadvantages of ERP: Crashing possibility: By taking all the precautions since it is software, so there are chances of it that it will crash, and this factor can be reduced but cannot be completely removed. So all the available precaution must be made which has to be there for the complete back up. As to assure that chances of this system crashes will be minimum by giving a complete backup in terms of the software, hardware and standby source of electricity must be there. Because it is directly associated with the human lives especially in case of emergency. As in case of emergency the power failure occur and the patient records could not be send to the concerned department it may cause danger to the patient life. Vendor concerns: The ERP system success is completely based on the complete and thorough analysis of the place where it is deployed so if there is any ambiguity left in the system analysis it can cause great danger to the complete system. Expensive deployment: ERP is quite expensive in terms of its design as it is designed largely and integrated many units so it is considered as quite expensive solution. As it require much time also in its deployment too. Solution for these issues: As the effectiveness and large implementation of ERP system shows that they are quite effective especially in large companies. So there is a big need to make them more effective by removing all the above mentioned problems. A proper and effective backup system must be designed which will run side by side with the original one so that in any case it is crashed the loss of important information cannot be occurred. Choosing the right and trusted vendor can reduce the chances of any ambiguity remained in the system. Also the administration must be quite cooperative by giving all the information and records to the company so that they can understand completely and thoroughly. The ERP solutions were quite expensive before but as time pass and technology evolving the expenses on this system are reduced too. References: “Enterprise Resource Planning Systems Research: An Annotated Bibliography”, (Jose Esteves, Joan pastor) “A Multi-Level Approach to Measuring the Benefits of an ERP System in Manufacturing Firms”, Volume 22, (David Gefen; Arik Ragowsky) “Enterprise resource planning: cultural fits and misfits: is ERP a universal solution?” research article, (Christina Soh, Sia Siew Kien, Joanne Tay-Yap) “Critical success factors for ERP implementation: an organizational fit perspective”, research article,( Kyung-Kwon Hong, Young-Gul Kim) “Cultural complications of ERP”, (Robert Davison) “Misalignments in ERP Implementation: A Dialectic Perspective”, International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, (Christina Soh; Siew Kien Sia; Wai Fong Boh; May Tang) “Enterprise resource planning for hospitals”, volume 73, (Godefridus G van Merode, Siebren Groothuis, Arie Hasman) “The ERP Revolution: Surviving vs. Thriving”, volume 2, (Jeanne W. Ross, Michael R. Vitale) “What is ERP?” (Helmut Klaus, Michael Rosemann, Guy G. Gable) “Avoiding the Pitfalls of Erp System Implementation Information Systems Management”, Volume 21, Issue 2, 2004, (Theodore Grossman; James Walsh) Read More