Health Care Sector

Question: Write an essay on Health care sector. Answer: Introduction: Health care sector needs urgency in patient care and the use of IT in the hospital management is now an emerging trend globally. The IT implementation has enabled the physicians, administration in the hospital intranet with that of the third parties like drug firms, patients, insurance leading to improve care, better utilisation of resources, reduction in the wastes and increased patient satisfaction (Joumard et al. 2010). Use of resources: The case here is the Sydney Adventist Hospital based in Wahroonga, Sydney which we will analyse to understand the level of IT usage in rendering benefits to stakeholders. The Sydney Adventist Hospital has a dedicated website where it offers, contact information, finding specialist doctors, news, health facts, links (patients, and visitors), links (doctors and community), departments (emergency, maternity, cardiac, orthopaedic, cancer, urology, diagnostic). It also has nursing college Avondale College) in the campus. The hospital has 494 overnight beds but it has outpatient services (physiotherapy, cardiac rehabilitation, pathology radiology, ultrasound, nuclear medicine, wound care, radiation oncology, dietician services. Important for business survival: The use of hospitality management system has integrated the administration work that has eliminated the duplication, errors caused by the employees, impart digitalisation of reports and records (Erdtmann, 2016). This is shareable on real time basis, that is enabling hospital operations to be streamlined that has enabled reduction in overall cost of care. This is important from the patient point of view as convenience and ease of dealing with the Sydney Adventist Hospital has led to lesser time spends, accurate billing and electronic records that are accessible on real time anytime anywhere. Better diagnosis and management of patient, drug administration, treatment process is possible with the use of IT (Britain, 2012). Failing to implement leads to waste of time, efforts and bad patient experience, hence Sydney Adventist Hospital implementing web enabled architecture has improved its survival factor in Australia. Apply IT into business (Cost, planning, designing, equipment, installation, training) The costing of the end to end solution software like this can be outsourced to a specialist IT firm that has previous experience in end to end implementation. This is vital and the Sydney Adventist Hospital should be able to implement IT architecture in its premises with the servers and databases and dedicated team to control the IT administration. The IT planning of the hospitality management system should have the patients, physicians, support staff, finance, records management, drug inventory, housekeeping, departmental information embedded in it. The design as per business requirements should be scalable with the integration of the computer to capture the legacy (old records) current prescriptions, slides, test reports, images, to be integrated into one platform (Berg, 1999). The system for Sydney Adventist Hospital should have self help menu to enable first time users to learn navigate through the software, followed by self login, secured password and training area added to it. The hardware part should be uniform with only servers in Sydney Adventist Hospital to be stored, safely under security. The access of each IT module as per the designation and role in the Sydney Adventist Hospital is key to maintaining the CIA (confidentiality, integrity, accountability) in the whole system meeting ethical norms. Business use IT (internally such as staff, employees, and externally such as customers, suppliers) The web enabled process in Sydney Adventist Hospital requires a dedicated backend server which have databases of customers, doctors, transactions, records where the whole process is driven by a unique customer ID. The records system needs to have text based documents like prescriptions, while the reports of visual images. The integration of the records to be digitally converted needs software license and access by respective customer with their ID. The employee database which serves the patients as per departments are around 2300 with 700 support staffs need attendance, work area login, compensation, training, knowledge case studies to equip them. The records management are shareable between the testing department, physicians, nurses, that enables real time consultation at any stage of patient treatment process. The installation of integrated intranet for communication between doctors, email, chat are key to patient diagnosis process (Porter and Teisberg, 2006). The planning of hospi tal management will require customisation of software built on Java language with web interface (XML) and database as Oracle. The finance module is payment based so patient will register and pay with cash or card otherwise will opt for insurance (limit) to start the treatment (Stead and Lin, 2009). The communication with stakeholders will use invoice and purchase orders for the listed suppliers and vendors for drugs, house keeping for hospital beds, Benefits and advantages does IT bring to business? (Revenue, flexibility, reduces cost) There is significant spending for the hardware and the total networking cost in Sydney Adventist Hospital. Though it is a one time investment but the Sydney Adventist Hospital board needs to approve as it has long term cost realisation in terms of lesser wait times, accessing records multiple times by patient and physicians anywhere anytime. This flexibility allows better patient management, superior diagnosis, drug procurement and usage, treatment regimen improving the quality of health care (Systems, 2011). Physicians are able to cross consult for second opinion with an intrusive angle to understand a complicated patient case by accessing EHR (electronic health records) that will benefit the patient. Advanced level IT system enables the surgeon to view imagery which use lasers for micro surgery and that requires the employee to stay for very short stays. So both at tactical level for everyday and for strategic (patient care history) are the key factors which is enabling the medical profession. Thus both patients and the carers are able to access information and share in real time is a boon while the advanced level IT usage can lead to telemedicine (telepsychaitry, telepathology, remote patient monitoring), cross country teleICU of a patient (Rice, 2013). These are preventive technologies and also can be used to save 30-50% of patient inhouse treatment cost. Administration sending emails, SMS in phones for appointment or test reminders to outpatients are also enabling better patient experience in Sydney Adventist Hospital. Type of risk does IT bring to business (security, privacy, confidentiality) There are different kinds of risks involved when IT is considered (Starfield et al. 2005). Therefore meeting the medical norms and guidelines are default that is built to practice. So the next risk is about the patient record system (EHR). The issue of security of the records (radiologic images, lab test results, medicine prescription, invoice and bills), patient details and personal information is stored and accessed by the software (Kaplan and Porter, 2011). The unauthorised access, breaches of user access, is violating the electronic media and the availability of records to those who needs access. Thus each member attached to a patient needs to use the patient information, with the physician(s) allocated during treatment regimen need to set the privacy and security settings (Hillestad et al., 2005). It has two aspects of intranet sharing and the external sharing of the information or records should be dealt with legalities. IT staff of Sydney Adventist Hospital should be notified while audits to proactively control these issues should be done frequently. Patient privacy policy about physical and electronic medical information can have a devastating effect on the patient as it breaches patient rights, puts other stakeholders into forced legal responsibilities (Berwick, 2003). This can be resolved in Sydney Adventist Hospital with the use of VPN (virtual private networks), added with the SSL (secure socket layer) embedded in the financial module for any transaction, communication messages in intranet and extranet (encrypted) (Guptill, 2005). The use of biometrics can be used to access the computer and PC in the Sydney Adventist Hospital. Anti virus and firewalls can be constructed to prevent intranet access by unauthorised persons. Similarly, the database servers in the Sydney Adventist Hospital IT room needs password protection to maintain the data integrity. The use of the automatic account logoff in case of inactivity, single sign on, invalid user ID strict ly controlled should be implemented. These proactive measures and norms will help Sydney Adventist Hospital to take care of EMR (electronic medical records database). Data integrity in the hospital can be done while any physician or medical support staff to verify and modified in between to test intrusion detection. Use of digital signatures in test, lab, radiology reports and prescriptions can help to streamline the risks (Devore and Champion, 2011). Business maintain and monitor IT: Patient care system is vital part of the bigger system of hospitality management system, and there are several technologies involved (Blackstone and Fuhr, 2007). The basic ones are providing information and advice, administration and transaction, consultations and clinical, diagnosis and monitoring, relationships (internal and external) that will form a larger part of Sydney Adventist Hospital activities. The IT monitoring team in Sydney Adventist Hospital needs to be separate to that of the IT admin as they till try to find gaps in the IT architecture design, IT performance, security breach. The cross sectional analysis of the IT system in Sydney Adventist Hospital will see patient (family member) initiated actions (40%) for choosing a doctor and booking and appointment (web and telephone) which will lead to e-prescription services (10%), rest equally shared by testing, checking prescriptions for drug dose, lab reports (Christensen and Hwang, 2009). The IT design of modules should r eflect a value proposition for the user, which should ideally support the very purpose of IT enabling transactions, patients care with lesser effort. Conclusion: The emergence of an efficient Sydney Adventist Hospital administration will have patient and treatment procedures in a dashboard, which will help to create better quality services. The integration of IT and mobile has been a boon that has enabled to personalise communication. The challenge in medical equipment monitoring and data capture into IT system needs special attention for the hospital team. The newer avenues like video or telemedicine, interactive health information will be key to the future use of technology in the hospital domain. References: Berg, M. (1999). Patient care information systems and health care work: a sociotechnical approach. International journal of medical informatics, 55(2), pp.87101. Berwick, D.M. (2003). Disseminating innovations in health care. Jama, 289(15), pp.196975. Available at: Blackstone, E.A. and Fuhr, J.P. (2007). Redefining health care: Creating value-based competition on results. Atlantic Economic Journal, 35(4), pp.491501. Christensen, C.M. and Hwang, J. (2009). A Disruptive Solution for Health Care. BusinessWeek Online, p.3. Available at: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=trueanddb=buhandAN=36806067andsite=ehost-live. Devore, S. and Champion, R.W. (2011). Driving population health through accountable care organizations. Health affairs (Project Hope), 30(1), pp.4150. Available at: https://content.healthaffairs.org/content/30/1/41.short. Erdtmann, F. (2016). Improving Diagnosis in Health Care. Military Medicine, 181(March), pp.183186. Guptill, J. (2005). Knowledge management in health care. Journal of health care finance, 31(3), pp.1014. Hillestad, R. et al. (2005). Can electronic medical record systems transform health care? Potential health benefits, savings, and costs. Health affairs (Project Hope), 24(5), pp.110317. Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16162551. Joumard, I., Andr, C. and Nicq, C. (2010). Health Care Systems: Efficiency and Institutions. OECD Economics Department, (769), p.133. Kaplan, R.S. and Porter, M.E. (2011). How to solve the cost crisis in health care. Harvard business review, 89(9). Rice, T. (2013). The behavioral economics of health and health care. Annual review of public health, 34, pp.431447. Available at: Starfield, B., Shi, L. and Macinko, J. (2005). Contribution of primary care to health systems and health. The Milbank quarterly, 83(3), pp.457502. Stead, W.W. and Lin, H.S. (2009). Computational Technology for Effective Health Careà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¯: Immediate Steps and Strategic Directions. The National Academy Press. Sydney Adventist hospital, (2016) About Us. Available[Accessed on 29 May 2016] Systems, B, S. (2011). Health IT and Patient Safetyà ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¯: Building Safer Systems for Better Care, [Accessed on 29 May 2016]