IT Strategies in Healthcare Sectors - Assignment Example

IT STRACTEGIES TABLE OF CONTENT INTRODUCTION BUSINESS PROCESSES AND INFORMATION SYSTEM IN THE HEALTHCARE CHALLENGES THE VALUE CHAIN HOW A TYPICAL ERP SYSTEM COULD HELP THE NHS TRUST RECONMENDATION REFERENCES INTRODUCTION This is a report on investigation done on challenges confronting the integrated operation of business and IT strategies in the primary and secondary healthcare sectors, and functions of business processes so as to meet the challenges and hence to provide continuously improving quality healthcare service delivery. In this report also I shall be discussing business processes and information systems in healthcare sectors and most importantly the value chain analysis and balanced scorecard analyses of the primary and secondary sectors of the trust. I am also going to clearly identify the value chains of all the service providers- public and private, in the two sectors and discuss the accompanying analyses. And lastly I intend to shed light on how a typical ERP system could help the NHS trust. BUSINESS PROCESSES AND INFORMATION SYSTEM IN HEALTHCARE SECTORS Health care is an information-intensive business generating huge volumes of data from hospitals, primary care surgeries, clinics, and laboratories. Yet much of this data continues to be processed manually in spite of decades of experience in the successful application of information technology (IT) in other information-intensive industries. There are a number of reasons for this state, including underinvestment in IT (especially clinical computing), lack of political will, fragmented markets with inadequate revenue streams to support development of new systems, and lack of standards or slow adoption of standards where they do exist. In addition, there are some specific challenges relating to the use of IT in health, such as the complexity of medical data, data entry problems, security and confidentiality concerns, the absence in many countries of a unique national patient identifier, and a general lack of awareness of the benefits-and risks-of IT. Historically, health care organizations have consisted of independent and autonomous units with little clinical benefit perceived for sharing of information, which in turn fostered a climate of independence in the use of IT. SI did not therefore have a high priority. However, the pressure on the health care business to change is mounting. The gap between the demand for health care from an increasingly well-informed and expectant public, and the ability of the state and health care organizations to meet this demand is widening all the time. Health care experts, policymakers, taxpayers, and consumers consider health information technologies, such as electronic health records and computerized provider order entry, to be critical to transforming the health care industry. Information management is fundamental to health care delivery. Given the fragmented nature of health care, the large volume of transactions in the system, the need to integrate new scientific evidence into practice, and other complex information management activities, the limitations of paper-based information management are intuitively apparent. While the benefits of health information technology are clear in theory, adapting new information systems to health care has proven difficult and rates of use have been limited. Most information technology applications have centered on administrative and financial transactions rather than on delivering clinical care. The Challenge Many of the most urgent challenges facing healthcare companies today originate in IT practices. The growth in digital data volumes combined with the standardized use of electronic systems has improved the quality of healthcare services. However, the complexities of the operating environment have increased in tandem. The need for rapid information accessibility and sharing, of multiple data types, and for easy information management, flowing from varying entry points, is critical to operational success. While business continuity and enhanced productivity may head enterprise goals, provider accountability, client privacy, information portability, and process simplification lead regulatory and consumer demands. With concerns over standards of care, patient rights, and insurance fraud, governments continue to impose stringent requirements to ensure industry integrity and safety. Established data permanence and security rules aim to guarantee enterprise responsibility around information authenticy and appropriate disclosure. Healthcare providers and insurance firms must obey these mandates to avoid significant fines, operational restraints, and legal exposure. Opposite such high stakes, many healthcare organizations have devoted considerable effort to the development of compliance plans and strategies intended to mitigate both business and IT risks. The task can prove to be daunting; however, as much enterprise IT infrastructures are rooted in a combination of proprietary, inherited, and in some cases antiquated equipment, processes, and point solutions. Some firms also rely on homegrown technology and legacy applications, typically residing at both central and remote locations. In this context, IT managers often contend with enterprise systems that are labor-intensive and error-prone or, at a minimum, prohibitive in terms of performance and cost. The majority of these systems were not devised to handle or expand to the variety of data types, performance requirements, accessibility needs, or regulatory restrictions of today's climate. THE VALUE CHAIN Organisations wishing to make the transition to a high-value business must first ensure the necessary conditions exist - in terms of skills, resources and absorptive capacity. They must ask tough questions about value creation. - Is senior management giving sufficient thought to these three high-value strategies - Is the organisation giving the adoption of best practice serious consideration and management resources - How can the organisation reorganise to deliver better value - Is the organisation ready for a radical shift in the way it thinks about organisational strategy - Does it have the necessary infrastructure to support an innovation strategy - and if not what can be done about it However, a proper implementation process, then, attempts to reach a situation as described in. The primary work processes denote all the work that is directly linked to patient care (the central work tasks of doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals). The secondary work tasks consist of the work processes that support, complement and steer the primary care process. This includes the whole gamut ranging from resource management, management of medical equipment, food services, billing, to overall organization management. The arrows indicate a relationship of mutual transformation. The IS should help transform the primary work processes (affording e.g. integral care processes, or new ways of quality control), and, likewise, should help transform the secondary work tasks (affording, e.g., new, efficient resource management, or more strategic use of primary care process information). Part and parcel of this is, of course, that the primary and secondary work processes become more aligned - a development that is already taking place throughout Western medicine, but that is requiring a re-ordering of some of the fundamental ordering principles of the professional bureaucracy. Atkinson and Peel use a much more 'peaceful' metaphor when they speak of 'growing' rather than 'building' information system. HOW A TYPICAL ERP SYSTEM COULD HELP THE NHS TRUST. As a part of the United Kingdom's extensive National Health Service (NHS), Cardiff & Vale NHS Trust in Wales has a dual mandate: deliver high quality care to all its citizens and ensure that their taxes, which pay for the system, are spent wisely. Each trust is also responsible for developing a strategy on how to improve services to patients. In 1999, Cardiff & Vale NHS Trust joined with 11 other Welsh trusts in mapping out a course that would eventually unite the trusts on a common e-business infrastructure. Such a system, the trusts determined, would trim waste and bring uniform accountability to key business processes, particularly in the area of procurement and payment processing. Collectively, Wales NHS trusts spend some 3.8 billion (US$6.8 billion) annually. As a first step, Cardiff & Vale NHS Trust is investing 2.3 million over five years on a selection of Oracle procurement, financial, and portal technologies designed to improve financial management, automate procurement, drive out maverick spending, reduce supply chain inefficiencies, and give the trust more leverage in negotiating bulk purchasing agreements. RECONMENDATION Improving Patient Care is a special section that needs to be supported. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) for example need to go the extra mile to improve both primary and secondary Healthcare system. The opinions expressed in this report are for the Executive Board may wish to take note of the present report and provide guidance with regard to primary and secondary to healthcare services. REFRENCE: Berg M: Rationalizing Medical Work. Decision Support Techniques and Medical Practices. MIT Press, Cambridge, 1997. Read More