ifsm 305 assignment case study 4

Table of Contents

Contents Introduction 3 I. Organizational Analysis and Requirements 3 A. Introduction 3 B. Strategic Use of Technology 4 C. Components of an Information System 4 D. Functional Requirements 7 E. Summary 7 Sharing Clinical Data 9 Introduction 9 Need to share data 10 Types of data to be shared 11 Figure 1: Data shared to Business associate contracts 11 Figure 2: Records sharing in the organization 12 Ethical, Legal and Regulatory Policy Issues 15 Introduction 15 Table of Ethical, Legal and Regulatory Policy Issues 15 Addressing the most difficult Issue 20 Summary 20 References 21

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.

3. To enhance the retrieval of the patients’ documents for referral – once the information of the patient is in the system, the health practitioner can view that information from any office of the health by entering the unique number of the patient. Once it has been enter, all the information of the patient will be at the dispose of the practitioner.

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.

Electronic Health Record (EHR) is the computerized storage and sharing of patients’ health information to help in continuous monitoring of the patients’ health (Shickel B., 2017). This is a system developed to enable health clinics share information that can help in providing effective medication to the patients with different kinds of health needs. The data on patients is stored and accessed by the clinics during visits from the patient which will help in care management of the patients. An electronic health record system can be helpful as the information stored consist of medical history of a patient, laboratory tests, treatment plans, immunization dates and various allergies of the patients. This is helpful when the patient visits different clinic health providers where they will not need to explain the situations over and over again.

Electronic health record system automates information sharing and reduces the traditional paper work which was tiresome and had a great risk of losing information. With the HER, information on patients is kept in a secure system where only authorized persons can access it. Errors are minimized in provision of health care since the information kept can be more accurate and available at any given time.

Wasatch Family Clinic will greatly benefit from this strategy of recording, keeping and sharing of information on patients. The nurses can use the system to easily record the patients’ names, numbers and all other critical information required during scheduling for clinical attendance of any patient. Tracing of the information will be easier compared to using the traditional form of papers in storing information for a patient.

Information on health status of a patient has to be kept with care and only authorized persons can be able to access them. This helps in building ethical handling of patients’ information which creates their trust on the health care providers (Drazen J., 2015).

Wasatch Family Clinic needs to share their health data with the patients for them to understand their health issues. The clinic also needs to share data with other health facilities in order to increase the patient’s safety and a great care.

Duplicate registrations will be avoided by sharing data in the different departments of the health care center. A real-time link can be created for the patients from registration, through consultation, testing and final medication. This can save Wasatch family Clinic from traditional paper work which took most time when searching for medical records of a patient at every stage in the clinic. Time can also be saved when the information of the patient is a system shared by the departments of the clinic health center.

Wasatch Family Clinic will also benefit economically when the data is shared improving service time and hence reducing the time patients has to wait before they are served. This increases the number of patients visiting the clinic which will translate to general revenue generation and profit maximizations. This leads to continuous growth of the health care clinic and provision of more services.

Sharing data with other physicians can help in identifying the symptoms Dr. Betts might not be aware of. Some of the specialist in different healthcare providers can offer great solutions to a certain development of any given patient’s symptoms, improving the treatment process of the possible disease.

Data can be shared to identify an outbreak of a given disease. Health researchers can use the data to identify the disease and provide possible solutions to enable saving lives. The characteristics can be counter-checked with previous encounters in order to relate the solutions to the disease.

Data is one of the most critical concerns of any given organization. When the data is acquired by a third party in an unauthorized manner, it can be misused and most likely, it may lead to losses of the breached organization. Every organization should put strategies in place where data can be handled with care to reduce breaching and consequent losses.

Wasatch Family Clinic will need to be selective on information that can be shared to a third party. Authorization of data access can be implemented carefully with the system in order to ensure that only information needed, can be accessed. The clinic needs to share data with laboratories, physician and pharmacy.

The symptoms can be recorded for a patient and shared with the laboratory for the attendant to conduct specified tests for the patient. The results can be shared with the physician or source of the data for further recommendation on medical assessment. Dr. Betts can send data of a patient to the lab specifying the test required which is not available in the clinic.

Prescription can be shared with the pharmacy where the patient can be sent to collect certain medical drugs that are not available in the health center. This can help in provision of great health care for the patients.

Some unique symptoms observed in patients can be shared to physicians and research medical institutions with anonymity to ensure the patient’s confidentiality is observed. These symptoms can be determined in order to identify the disease and possible solutions to save the patients and to curb outbreak that may lead to many losses.

Data Interchange Standards

Although data sharing is vital in the clinic environment, some standards must be observed in order to portray an ethical environment suitable for patients. Data interchange standards include the data to be shared, required interface and format that can be used to share data in a clinical environment. This is important considering the information of a patient has to be secured from unauthorized persons. In the clinical environment, the message to be communicated can be encoded during exchange to ensure that only authorized persons can understand what is communicated.

Health Level Seven (HL7) is used transferring messages of clinic data. Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine can be used to transfer information in form of images (Safety P., 2004). National Council for Prescription Drug programs is used by pharmacists to interchange the data (Vincent C., 2011).

The clinical devices can be design and developed to ensure safe storage of data, transfer and ease usability through observation of standards for human factor design as portrayed in the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI) (Vincent C., 2011).

Linking of data in various departments of the Wasatch Family Clinic is vital since it ensures smooth operation and accessibility in other department enabling maintenance and integrity of the data for patients. Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPPA) ensured that the patients’ information is linked with other departments ensuring that the confidentiality is observed for the patients’ data.

Summary

Electronic Health Record (EHR) is a vital tool in a clinical environment to enable sharing patient’s data keeping records and reference of the patients’ information at a given place enable easy management and quick attendance. Wasatch Family Clinic should therefore adopt the strategy to ensure increased treatment options and great revenue generation due to first attendance accrued adoption of the new technology.

An electronic health record system (EHR) has great benefits in improving the health care provision in a clinical environment. It helps in data sharing which eases the development of required treatment procedures hence saving patients’ lives. This data sharing idea however puts patient’s information confidentiality at risks (Roehrs A. et al, 2017). This is where Ethical, Legal and Regulatory Policy Issues comes in to ensure that the patients’ data are protected from unauthorized parties who may misuse the data causing patients’ conflicts with healthcare providers.

The table below shows the ethical, legal and regulatory policy issues which consist of 20 topics with their definitions, the impacts it has in a clinical environment and how the topic is addressed in the EHR system (Moore W. & Frye S., 2019).

Developing strategies to address the topics in an electronic health records can pose challenges to the organization. Business associate contracts possess the greatest challenge in the organization. The ability of Wasatch Family Clinic to make agreements on the covered entities may be a challenge when in it comes to creation of EHR system implementations to ensure data security. Such entities may have weak systems which will end up encouraging data breaching and lose of confidentiality for patients’ health records. This issue can be addressed by ensuring that a solid research and investigation is done before coming to agreements with the business associate.

Ethical, Legal and Regulatory Policy Issues are vital in healthcare environment to ensure that information regarding patients’ health is kept private and secure away from third parties who might misuse the data. Protection and ethical of patients’ data increases their confidentiality and a great relationship between them and the healthcare providers.

Drazen, J. M. (2015). Sharing individual patient data from clinical trials. New England Journal of Medicine, 372(3), 201-202.

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

Moore, W., & Frye, S. A. (2019). A Review of the HIPAA, Part 1: History, PHI, and Privacy and Security Rules. Journal of nuclear medicine technology, jnmt-119.

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

Roehrs, A., Da Costa, C. A., da Rosa Righi, R., & De Oliveira, K. S. F. (2017). Personal health records: a systematic literature review. Journal of medical Internet research, 19(1), e13.

Shickel, B., Tighe, P. J., Bihorac, A., & Rashidi, P. (2017). Deep EHR: a survey of recent advances in deep learning techniques for electronic health record (EHR) analysis. IEEE journal of biomedical and health informatics, 22(5), 1589-1604.

Safety, P. (2004). Achieving a new standard for care. Washington, DC: National Academies of Science.

Vincent, C. (2011). Patient safety. John Wiley & Sons.