Ifsm 305 assignment

Wasatch Family Clinic is a small clinic within a community that provides the medical practices to the residents and their families. It is owned and managed by Dr. Betts who is also acting as a practitioner. The clinic has two nurses who assists in the front desk duties (all the administrative works) and the doctor when attending to the patient. Some of the front desk administrative works that are performed by this nurses in duty includes the billing, answering the phone, taking the prescription file requests, scheduling the appointments, and faxing among others administrative tasks. The clinic has one desktop and three examination room that are used to service all the patients within the area. The only software which is used with the desktop is the appointment scheduling system that is standalone meaning that all other processes are manual.

The problems that are facing the clinic are slow ways for checking the patients in, long waiting time for the patient, poor means for the record keeping (paper work), difficulties in retrieving the documents, and little resources for more services. As a result of these problems which are facing the clinic, there is the need to improve the patients’ outcome with the use of the Electronic Health Records (EHR). This paper will address four main things. First is the main requirements that are needed for improvement. Secondly is the data sharing. Thirdly the ethical, legal and the regulatory policy issues and lastly the system recommendation.

The Wasatch Family Clinic helps the area around it to provide the clinic services to its people. However, the organization is faced by several challenges like the a lot of time taken to check the client in, manual record keeping, difficulties in retrieving the patients document among other challenges. As a result of this, there is an implementation of the EHR system that will benefit the organization by increasing the speed of how things the normal running activities are being done (In Khosrow-Pour & IGI Global, 2019).

The EHR system is composed of the collection of the patients’ information which are being in a digitized form. The system has the capabilities of sharing the records in the different settings of the healthcare as long as there is a network connection (Musen, et al., 2017). With this capabilities of the system, the following strategic goals of the organization that have been identified will be fully supported by the system.

1. To enhance the billing process while reducing the amount of work done in the manual billing – the system captures all the charges that are being used in the processes undertaken by the patient. The charges of a specific patient are then generated at once by several clicks and the submitted to the insurance companies within a short period of time.

2. To manage the records of the patients – once the different patient records have been entered into the system, a unique number of the patient is used for all the patients’ records and updates.

The information system is composed of the several different component like people, technology, processes and data that supports the well-functioning of the system to support the activities of the Wasatch Family Clinic (In Khosrow-Pour, & IGI Global, 2019). The following are the relationships of the EHR system to the various components in order to support the activities at the Wasatch Family Clinic:

1. People – these are the different persons that will be using the various functionalities of the system. They include;

A. Dr. Betts who is playing the role of the practitioner or a doctor. The system helps him to fill the prescription for the patient together with capturing the results that are from the laboratory.

B. Jassamine whose role is a receptionist. The system helps her in the patients’ registration and together with generating the billing charges for the patients.

C. Clementine who plays the role of assisting Dr. Betts in the patients visits. The system will help her to search for the patients’ information together with giving the prescriptions.

2. Organizational Processes – in the clinic, there are a lot of processes are taking place. Among them we have;

A. Patient transfer. This is where the patient is being transferred to a higher specialized hospital for further treatment. This process is highly improved by the ERP system are the search for the patient information for referral will be very fast hence reducing the wasted in the manual search at the files.

B. Prescription. This are the instructions which are being given to the patient by the heath practitioner for the medication and treatment. This will have be improved by the system filling the prescription will be done by the system hence reduced errors.

C. Billing. This is where the all the charges of the patient summed up. the system will enhance this process as it will capture all the charges of the identified patient and puts the together ready for being submitted at the insurance company.

3. Data – the EHR system that will be used as the clinic will collect, store and process a lot of data which includes;

The EHR system can be broken down to the different categories to ensure that all the processes and the features needed are provided. Among the important requirements for the system includes;

From the identified problems of the Wasatch family clinic, the EHR system will fully suit their needs. Among them we have the increase in the speed of working on the different process like the data retrieval will be increased hence reducing the waiting of the patients and increasing the number of the patients being served. This will be enhanced by the different functionalities of the system that will allow all these activities to be carried out. As a result of these, the organization should make a fast move in the adoption of the system.

Top of Form

In Khosrow-Pour, M., & IGI Global,. (2019). Advanced methodologies and technologies in medicine and healthcare.

Bottom of Form

Musen, M. A., Middleton, B., & Greenes, R. A. (2014). Clinical decision-support systems. In Biomedical informatics (pp. 643-674). Springer, London.