Part I Attached similarity 20%
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Technology Project Paper Part 1
Florida National University
Jose Cardentey
Health Care Informatics
Professor Jacquelin Alonso
January 28,2022
Electronic Health Records Proposal
Executive Summary
The healthcare sector has making bold strides in reducing the number of medical errors which have been claiming the lives of many patients by adoption of numerous technology to determine the technology that will be most effective. among these technologies is Electronic Health Records whose goal is to improve the documentation of patient information to guide practitioners when prescribing medication and keeping track of the patient outcomes. The deployment of this technology in the health facility calls for collaboration with different shareholders in different disciplines in the health sector. For successful implementation, the proposal provides a list of activities that need to executed. They include development of the lead committee who will oversee the accomplishment of the project goals, strategies to manage the EHR system and the strategies to manage changes that will face the system due to the rapidly changing business environment. The goal of this report is to analyze the background of the technology and briefly describe the project implementation along with the goals and the benefits the health sector will enjoy once they adopt the technology.
Background information
Over the past few years, Electronic Health Records have become the trend in the healthcare industry. The government has been consistently implementing initiatives to better the outcome of this technology through financial stimulations. These initiatives promise to reward the citizens with greater integration and availability of patient data to a level that has never been maneuvered in medical history. The main goal of deploying Electronic health records across the health sector is to boost cost-effectiveness and eliminate medical errors that have claimed many lives in the past. The technology intends to accomplish this goal by increasing collaboration between the doctors and their patients and fostering more on establishing shared health care where the professionals and the patients can overcome future technological changes together. Electronic Health Systems can relate to a wide range of electronic information systems that healthcare can use to manage and collect patient data. EHR systems can be deployed in individual health facilities to act as interoperating systems within these affiliated units; they can also be deployed nationwide or regional. The healthcare units that benefit from this technology include pharmacies, hospitals, general professional surgeries and other healthcare providers.
The implementation of EHR tends to be a highly complex process that involves a wide range of technical and organizational factors such as organizational structure, human skills, technical infrastructure, culture, coordination and monetary resources. As many scholars argue, implementing any information system in healthcare tends to be more challenging than any other industry. This is due to the complexity of data entry, medical data challenges, confidentiality and security concerns, and an overall absence of the information technology’s paybacks to the healthcare sector. According to Nguyen et al. (2014), the healthcare industry differs significantly from other organizations because they have numerous objectives, including providing cure and care for their patients and providing quality education to their nurses and physicians (Bosse et al., 2018). The second difference is that the healthcare industry adopts medical practitioners with high expertise, authority and autonomy. As a result, these aspects can affect the implementation of information systems like electronic health records.
Project Discussion
When administering EHR projects, it calls for many shareholders from different healthcare settings who will play the lead role in managing the arising changes triggered by the advancing technology, which also triggers changes in patient expectations from the health sector. Therefore, it is essential to lay down the relevant strategies that will be used to resolve such issues, including establishing lead committees whose role will be to oversee the practical functionality of the technology systems, manage the project, and control arising changes.
Leading committees
The proposal will call for the establishment of a competent board of members who will determine the general viability and outcomes of the project. This will play an integral role in contributing to the widespread success of the project implementation by selecting the most qualified management team and employees. There are various functions that various individuals must execute to assist in the implementation process. The leading committee will be made of the four main players of the healthcare industry. They include clinical champions, clinical team members, EHR project managers, and the EHR implementation team. The clinical champion plays the role of a visionary leader whose primary responsibility will be providing a clear layout of what the system should feature based on the organizational structure and objectives that the organization, employees and patients intend to acquire from the technology. The clinical champion will also provide the project team with documentation and preside over decisions that necessitate the best implementation technique. The project manager’s responsibility will be to execute the numerous managerial functions of the project, including coordinating, planning, organizing, and facilitating the countless activities that will be taking place in the implementation of the project. The project manager should hold the relevant knowledge required in the specific practice procedures and provide ample support to changes that will arise in the future. In addition, the project manager should possess excellent communication skills as they will be in charge of coordinating the rest of the team members by providing new updates to facilitate project success.
Clinical team members are an essential asset in the implementation of the project. These team members include nurses, physicians, billing, medical assistants, medical records and front office management employees. These employees will have a critical role in determining the system requirements and at the same time perform the function of evaluating the capability of the system provider in fulfilling these conditions (Menachemi and Brooks, 2006). The members should be knowledgeable within the area of expertise and should have well-developed analytical skills that they will use to guarantee successful implementation. The EHR implementation board will comprise IT experts who will be in the front line assisting in program coding, designing the system flow, establishing the interface hardware, and performing tests of the design system. The implementation team will be tasked with providing the relevant training to the system users to ensure that they will understand its significance and thus be able to make maximum use of the system. As a result, the management team has incorporated team members from various disciplines in the health facility. Establishing such a collaborative system will play an integral role in delivering the intended paybacks.
Nevertheless, the collective approach helps evade the complications associated with health care facilities. Such include insufficiency of the EHR to act as a single correspondence channel, challenges in identifying relevant data, requirements to deliver better-facilitated care to patients and interruptions to both work and trust process because of the issues related to EHR. Collaborative techniques in intensifying teamwork and better implementing the full system guarantee that the system will be deployed by employing the highest efficiency level.
Managing the EHR project
The management of the EHR project can be accomplished through numerous stages. This includes project initiation, planning, execution and control. The project’s initiation phase will inform the health facility administrators on the EHR project that the organization can utilize to improve hospital outcomes. Other actions that need to be executed within this phase include recognizing the numerous forms of investors, project scope description, statement of the skills that the staff members must have to take part in the implementation, and the IT expertise needed. The phase will also include activities such as the system’s budget statement and procurement process. Moreover, the initiation phase will assess the risk that will determine the relevant course of action the project managers should pursue if something backfired.
The second phase will be the planning phase, which will involve formulating the numerous activities that will take place in the implementation process. This will include selecting and identifying the project team, calculating the underlying project risks, laying down the work plan, including the expectations to ensure that none of them will be overlooked, and formulating the communication strategy and cost and time activities (Gans et al., 2005). An essential section of arrangement is correspondence, given that today there is the simple access to media channels that can be integrated to guarantee efficient communication between the team players. The third phase will be the execution phase, involving the project managers performing various functions. The tasks will include completing the plans, enhancing team collaboration, overseeing proper management of the venture assets, and facilitating the project advancement to ensure that it aligns with the project scope. Other roles will include managing and regulating venture problems to guarantee quality control and manage the changes as dictated by the project scope.
The last phase will be the control phase which will involve numerous activities, including measuring and monitoring the countless variances arising in the project plan. The main procedures that will take place in this phase include adjusting the changes that are happening in the scoping program, controlling costs to avoid budget overruns, analyzing and reporting on the performance and developing an effective control and risk procedure. The project manager will oversee effective monitoring of how the EHR project implementation can bring more consistent and unique outcomes. Other relevant measures, such as the estimated time for project completion and budget, are essential in assessing the success or failure of the entire implementation process.
Managing change within the EHR
Implementing an information system will call for future advancement to ensure that the system will remain relevant in the long run. Also, changes within the system can be triggered by changes other than technology, including changes to the organizational structure that may attract resistance from the employees (Nguyen et al., 2014). As a result, it will be necessary for the project proposal to include an effective change structure to ensure that the employees will not have problems coping with the new system. During the implementation process, the project anticipates a lot of resistance from the employees since many patients and employees are already accustomed to the paper system. Therefore, developing an approach that will respond to such issues will guarantee effective implementation of the EHR system within the facility.
Consequently, it will be essential to include these changes from the managing body, who will spawn the change throughout the organization and work together with the employees to help them adjust. Implementing new technology tends to attract uncertainty, attract the fear of loss, develop unnecessary pressure from the employees and patients, and thus manage to fear adopting it as many feel that it will not align with their health goals (Menachemi and Brooks, 2006). As a result, the facility should expect instability, hostility and threatened failure if the employees and the patients will not be taken through a proper orientation process to help them adjust.
As a result, the proposal proposes that it is essential for the healthcare facility to create a strategy that will create a climate for transition. This will be executed by inserting a sense of urgency, developing a guiding coalition and establishing a vision for the future state of the healthcare facility. Creating a sense of urgency is the best approach since the EHR system is an entirely new technology that many patients and employees cannot familiarize themselves with. Therefore, hospital leaders will be involved in the education program to transfer the knowledge acquired to the employees and patients confidently to help stimulate these groups to accept the change. Providing a clear picture of how the employees and patients will benefit from the implementation. It will show them that the facility still cares deeply about them, and that is why they want to take them through a successful transitioning process.
After stimulating the employees and patients to accept these changes, the second phase in change management will involve the organization through effective communication regarding its future through various techniques such as video questions, answer sessions and demonstrations through PowerPoint (Gans et al., 2005). This will be highly important to encourage the healthcare facility to ensure that the goals of the EHR technology will align with the organizational goals to ensure that every team clearly understands what is expected of them in implementing the desired change. Another strategy will be formulating short-term plans, which will ensure that the management can measure how the employees and patients are coping with the new system to determine if it will succeed. This will be accomplished by establishing conducive communication channels to ensure that the latest technology will not feel threatened. Still, instead, it should focus on instilling a sense of confidence that the teams can get better outcomes with the latest technology than before.
After the engagement, the third phase will be the actual system implementation and the predicted changes. Successful performance will be boosted through thorough staff training and retraining and creating a positive atmosphere during the execution. The change management team will focus broadly on problematic areas by encouraging solutions and aiding change within an individual’s behavior. Success celebration is also essential in administering as it encourages more employees to take the initiative to adapt to changes faster.
Goals, objective and significance Discussion
The main goal of applying EHR in healthcare is to boost the quality of care through the reduction of medical errors, to provide an effective technique of communication between the various shareholders involved, and to share information between the healthcare providers. EHR also aims at gathering information for research and educational purposes.
Implementation of EHR will have a lot of significance to healthcare information and data that is relied on during decision-making. It will hold a positive interface that will allow providers to review their patient’s data efficiently. Another significance is that electronic health systems will play an integral role in result administration by enabling the healthcare facility to manage their patients’ test results through radiology and lab reports. It will also facilitate order management which is all about improving the accuracy of prescriptions generated electronically, unlike the traditional methods where prescription errors will arise due to illegible handwriting (Boonstra et al., 2014). The technology will also play an integral role in providing decision support, reminders, and warnings to improve performance through drug interactions, disease outbreak identification, and administering the proper prevention. This will play an integral role in assisting the providers in making the right decisions for their patients. Electronic health records will be a system with immense capacity to link numerous providers to their patients and laboratories securely. This interconnectedness provides ample support to the patients as they can easily access educational materials and amplify the ability to feed data into the electronic health record system by themselves and be in the front line to monitor their health from home.
Electronic Health Records will play an integral role in overseeing effective management of the facility’s administrative procedures, which will improve the efficiency in appointments scheduling, eliminate any underlying confusion, and determine the measures that the hospital can be used to implement eligibility. The system will allow reporting, which will be executed by following some standardized procedures to generate these medical reports that the Federal, State, and local government can access anytime they need to. The paybacks will be expected from the application of the EHR as it will guarantee universal and immediate access to the patient’s data through the levels that are predetermined by HIPAA security compliance (Ajami et al., 2011). Another significance of EHR lies in improved documentation, which has played an integral role in eliminating the previous risks in paper-based record-keeping as many people could not read the physician’s handwriting. The practitioner’s handwriting was found in progress, orders, report notes, patient instructions and prescriptions. The EHR provides alternatives to capturing patient information through automatic documentation, which include down menus, scanning ability, checked boxes, and typewritten entries. The fastest and ease in the navigation of the patient data is another payback. The system allows effective communication between the various healthcare providers to develop measures that play an active role in improving patient care. A provider can order lab work and gain immediate notifications about the patient’s changing outcomes through the messaging system.
Patient portals provided by the EHR system stand out as one of the essential paybacks of using EHR, ensuring that the patients will communicate and receive assistance from their healthcare providers on a real-time basis. The information system is interoperable and can be easily shared with other organizations within the healthcare facilities concerning their health. The EHR plays an integral role in delivering faster care and independent decision making, which will be done by the healthcare staff regarding patient diagnoses and treatments with minimal errors inside the individual health records. Electronic health records make it easy for nurses to follow up with patient progress and track their continuing care under close supervision to improve their health outcomes (Bosse et al., 2018). The system will also save hospitals time during doctor appointments. The patients can access all critical information they need during emergencies such as allergies and effectively respond to them. Medical providers also stand the opportunity to benefit from the ample monetary incentives offered by the governments who are adopting this technology. In return, the providers can use these incentives in providing additional information to staff on the new procedures that they can use to improve the health outcomes of their patients.
Lastly, the healthcare sector will benefit from the amplified productivity and efficiency of electronic health records. It will play an active role in improving efficient chart management and guarantee rapid access to patient information anywhere. Electronic health records have a simple navigation interface that allows nurses to generate patient information quickly, thus saving time and boosting productivity. Adopting electronic health record technology will help increase the quality of medical care by amplifying the ability to exchange completed patient information in real-time. The system will also provide accurate and updated information regarding the patient, which is essential in providing quality care. Lastly, having readily available data is crucial to benchmark purposes such as auditing and analyzing auditing, risks, quality and return on investment to aid in maintaining an adequate healthcare facility.
References
Boonstra, A., Versluis, A., & Vos, J. F. (2014). Implementing electronic health records in hospitals: a systematic literature review. BMC health services research, 14(1), 1-24.
Bosse, J. D., Leblanc, R. G., Jackman, K., & Bjarnadottir, R. I. (2018). Benefits of implementing and improving collection of sexual orientation and gender identity data in electronic health records. CIN: Computers, Informatics, Nursing, 36(6), 267-274.
Nguyen, L., Bellucci, E., & Nguyen, L. T. (2014). Electronic health records implementation: an evaluation of information system impact and contingency factors. International journal of medical informatics, 83(11), 779-796.
Ajami, S., Ketabi, S., Isfahani, S. S., & Heidari, A. (2011). Readiness assessment of electronic health records implementation. Acta Informatica Medica, 19(4), 224.
Gans, D., Kralewski, J., Hammons, T., & Dowd, B. (2005). Medical groups’ adoption of electronic health records and information systems. Health affairs, 24(5), 1323-1333.
Menachemi, N., & Brooks, R. G. (2006). Reviewing the benefits and costs of electronic health records and associated patient safety technologies. Journal of medical systems, 30(3), 159-168.
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Assignment #2
Technology Project pertinent to their practice environment
THIS WEEK DUE PART II AND THOSE TO SUBMIT THE ENTIRE PROJECT (PAPER) . PART I ALREADY WITH CORRECTIONS SUGGESTED, IF ANY, AND PART II
Grading Criteria for Assignments #1 & 2
Technology Project Paper Part 1 (20 points of grade)
Technology Project Paper Part 2 (20 points of grade)
Student to identify a Technology Project pertinent to their practice environment. This proposal must include:
Executive Summary; Description of Project; Rationale Topic chosen; Research-supported by evidenced based recent literature; Project Clinical Goals & Objectives; Market/Financial Project Analysis;
Plan for Evaluation; Plan for Alternative Assumptions & Strategies.
Include how this project is applicable to the present Healthcare system in terms of the issues of healthcare access, quality & cost. Include 2 MSN Essentials.
Minimum 10 pages, double spaced,
Maximum 15 pages, double spaced, APA format.
Part 1:
• Identify Topic of Project Proposal (2 points)
• Description of project & Background Discussion (5 points)
• Goals & Objectives & Significance discussion (5 points)
• Include evidenced based research to support paper, at least three (5 points)
• Overall: Focused, Ideas with clarity, Overall compliance with grammar & APA 6th format (3 points). Include cover page and reference used on part I
Part 2:
*10 pages, double spaced, APA format style including cover and reference pages
• Financial Proposal analysis (4 points)
• Alternative plan of actions (4 points)
• Proposed project plan to include: (8 points)
o Project activities
o Timeline
o Budget
o Evaluation Plan
• Executive Summary at end of project (4 points)
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