Health Information Systems

Running head: Competitiveness and Performance Effectiveness 1

Competitiveness and Performance Effectiveness 4

Competitiveness and Performance Effectiveness for Healthcare IT System

Yolanda Dean

Health Information Systems

Professor Janet Kaplan

2/1/19

Strayer University

A chief information officer within a healthcare organization is an executive who oversees all operations in the hospital’s Information Technology department and engages other personnel when making purchasing decisions and determining technology related needs for the hospital. Chief information officers should possess certain characteristics. They must exhibit great leadership skills, outstanding communication skills, should be team players, credible and trustworthy. They should also have an in-depth understanding of the IT industry and the business of the healthcare organization. CIOs are responsible for the protection of sensitive patients information so as to ensure that the integrity of the healthcare organization is upheld (Liebe et al., 2015). They do this through monitoring the collection and maintenance of patient health records. They offer strategic planning, development, and coordination of the hospital's information and technology systems. It is their duty to facilitate communication and enhance cooperation among management, staff and other technology resources in the organization.

CIOs are also charged with the responsibility of managing multiple information and communication projects and systems. They create solutions that meet the needs of clinicians in the health organizations and ensure that the healthcare organization is up to date with the latest trends and issues in the healthcare industry. They create and implement user training programs. They are responsible for overseeing and evaluating the hospital's system security and back up procedures. CIOs are also the supervisors of the network administrators in a healthcare organization. Last but not least, it is the responsibility of the CIO to ensure that the healthcare organization achieves cost effective IT operations. A chief technology officer in a health care organization is also referred to as the chief technologist.

The CTO is fully in charge of the technological needs and the research and development needs of the health organization. The CTO position is the most senior technology executive position within a health care organization. A CTO must be well versed with the hospital's current business practices and computing systems. Likewise, CTOs should have a thorough understanding of healthcare issues and in-depth knowledge of standard software, interfaces and hardware requirements. CTOs should be diplomatic, strategic and critical thinkers, have great listening and communication skills, excellent interpersonal skills and should show transparent leadership as they lead the organization’s technical group. Moreover, CTOs are charged with the responsibility of designing and building the hospital's strategic IT roadmap that supports the organization's financial and clinical missions. The CTO evaluates hardware and software for compatibility and usefulness.

In addition, they offer strategic planning for every network related activity in a healthcare organization, including negotiating contracts and integrating all service providers. They also analyze and propose technology architecture for the hospital. I would recommend that CTOs and CIOs put emphasis on offering telehealth to patients living in rural settings to ensure the satisfaction of both the doctors and their patients. For example, developing telehealth applications that monitor a patient’s health. Such an application enables doctors to see and follow up on the progress of their patient's health condition without having patients to physically present themselves to the healthcare facility (Adibi, 2015). The application even allows doctors to monitor when patients take their medicine.

One developing technology that health care systems should embrace is the Electronic Medical Records (EMR). EMR is a technological tool, which if properly utilized, can improve the overall quality of patient’s care and cut on costs. An EMR systems should incorporate electronic prescribing, automated reporting of quality healthcare data, exchange of health information with other health care providers and electronic recording of patient’s personal details and information. All these requirements improve the legibility of patient’s records, aid in the reduction of prescription errors, boost the adherence of health care practitioners to excellent clinical practices and also improve patients and clinician's accessibility to health records. Similarly, the EMR facilitates the streamlining of health care processes that reduce medical errors which in turn improves the quality of patients care. For example, with electronic prescribing, doctors are able to communicate directly with the pharmacy thus reducing prescription errors. In addition, electronic prescribing also enhances the safety of patients as it automatically checks for harmful drug interactions. EMR systems improve overall efficiency by saving on time and so a hospital is able to cut down on wasteful spending. In general, an EMR systems enable healthcare providers to have access to accurate and complete information of their patients, thus ensuring that patients receive the best medical care.

Another developing technology that can be used by health care systems is the patient portal technologies. Patient portals improve patients care by enhancing engagement and interaction between patients and health care providers. Patient portals also give patients the chance to access their health information and medical details thus making them more cautious about their health. Through patients’ portals, patients are able to inquire about their health conditions, schedule appointments with clinicians and also pay their health bills. Patient portals also enable clinicians to make accurate decisions regarding the healthcare needs of their patients. Medical errors are also reduced through patient portals, as clinicians are able to receive first-hand information concerning a patient’s medical issue. Thus, reduce the misinterpretation of health information that can be caused when other medical staffs relay the same information to the clinicians on behalf of the patient. Clinicians can also send informative educational materials to their patients through these portals, thus saving costs for patients who don’t have to make frequent visits to the health facility when faced with a pressing issue.

Educating personnel, medical staff and other health care stakeholders on best security practices are amongst the methods that health care systems can use to protect health information and guard patient’s privacy. According to Abouelmehdi et al (2018), the human element is a very big security threat in the health care industry. It is therefore very important for health care management to create an organizational culture that respects and values the privacy of patients. The management should create awareness for its medical staff regarding security and privacy issues. The formulation of policies and practices is an effective way in which health systems can educate their personnel. Health care systems should formulate policies that address confidentiality of data, security, and protection of data, information flow and use of health information for research purposes.

These policies guide care providers on how they can use the health information of patients while maintaining patient’s privacy. They also reveal the circumstances under which sensitive health information may be released and to whom it can be released to. Therefore, the violation of patient’s privacy is minimized. In the same way, healthcare systems should also formulate patient-centered policies that make patients more aware of data issues and their rights regarding their health records. When patients are better informed, they will see to it that the organization protects their personal health information. Moreover, these policies give clear guidelines and procedures for monitoring and penalizing staff and medical personnel who breach security policies and privacy. Security awareness training is also a way of educating medical and staff and personnel by equipping them with knowledge on the precautionary measures they should take when handling sensitive patient information.

Another method that can be used by health systems to ensure data privacy and security is conducting routine risk assessments. Carrying out risks assessments on a regular basis enables healthcare institutions to figure out how vulnerable their systems are to cyber-attacks. A key point, cyber-attacks lead to health information of patients falling into the wrong hands. These attacks also give unauthorized users access to the confidential information of patients, which can result to major problems, amongst them ruining the reputation of a health care institution, and patients developing trust issues towards a health care organization. It is thus very vital for health care organizations to conduct these assessments more frequently so that they are able to identify any weak links within their data security systems and fix them before things blow out of proportion. With this in mind, the health care organization will ensure that their protected health information can only be accessed by authorized users.

The decision of a healthcare organization to adopt technology in its healthcare operations can be met with a lot of resistance from the personnel and medical staff in that organization. It is therefore very important for the organization to employ the best training strategy to avoid setbacks from employee resistance. I would suggest the use of the demonstration strategy when training health care providers on technology use in health care. This strategy is the most effective when carrying out technical based training as it incorporates both words and visual presentations. The demonstration strategy will involve a step to step guide on how to use hardware or software by using practical examples to drive the point home.

Through the demonstration strategy, the healthcare organization will capture the attention of the care providers even more as they will be observing and listening to the performances being put forth in visual form and in audio form. The demonstrations will also strengthen the retention capacity of the care providers. Specifically, they will be able to remember what they trained on much faster as they will have the picture in their minds. The demonstration strategy will make the training more interesting, making healthcare providers more motivated to learn and gain the necessary technical skills. In addition, demonstration increases the understanding of complex technical skills, hence making it the most effective training strategy in this case.

With the transformative changes that healthcare organizations are undergoing, and at an unprecedented pace for that matter, effective IT alignment and strategic planning is key in reducing complexities in the Health information technology portfolio (Wager et al.,2017). Effective IT alignment improves organizational performance and enables a healthcare organization to achieve a competitive advantage in the healthcare industry. For health care organizations, change is the key factor that influences IT alignment. Attaining IT alignment can be quite challenging for IT executives. One of the best practices to achieve effective IT alignment is to define the role of technology in the healthcare organization and establishing clear objectives on the same. The organization’s IT leadership should clarify the exact value that technology is bringing to the healthcare organization, whether it is short term or long term.

Further, the organization's IT leadership should also define whether they want IT to be part of their organization’s long-term success and long-term strategic planning tool. By doing so, the IT leadership should involve the organization's entire top leadership management to increase the chances of success of the strategic initiatives. The second practice is keeping abreast of progress through the use of metrics. Monitoring the progress of IT performance and establishing performance indicators for IT projects enables the organization's leadership to detect any issues that may slow down the success of the strategic initiatives. Thirdly, the organization's IT leadership should devise a way of communicating the results and decisions from the IT governance processes to everyone in the organization. They can use this channel to appreciate and commend their IT staff for their tremendous efforts and commitment. Lastly, doing so strengthens teamwork and makes it easier to accomplish IT strategic initiatives.

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References

Abouelmehdi, K., Beni-Hessane, A., & Khaloufi, H. (2018). Big healthcare data: preserving security and privacy. Journal of Big Data, 5(1), 1.

Adibi, S. (Ed.). (2015). Mobile health: a technology road map(Vol. 5). Springer.

Liebe, J. D., Hüsers, J., & Hübner, U. (2015). Investigating the roots of successful IT adoption processes-an empirical study exploring the shared awareness-knowledge of Directors of Nursing and Chief Information Officers. BMC medical informatics and decision making, 16(1), 10.

Wager, K. A., Lee, F. W., & Glaser, J. P. (2017). Health care information systems: a practical approach for health care management. John Wiley & Sons.