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1. BACKGROUND

Setting

The proposal will focus on ABC Health Care. This is a facility that is ranked among the best performing organizations in the American Pacific region. Indeed, it is the best in the San Francisco Bay Area, and has received the ‘Honor Roll’ status due to the exceptional services it has been availing in each of the fifteen medical specialties available.

Health Care Service

Health organizations have been migrating to IT-based platforms in order to enhance the efficiency of service delivery. Although the ABC Health Care has actually migrated, there remain a couple of steps which out to be taken in order to achieve the desired improvement. There is the need to reexamine and improve patient-friendliness. The system ought to also be relooked in order to minimize medical errors and have a way of avoiding overburdening of the system.

Problem

Even though the ABC Health Care has achieved success while addressing highly complex conditions, there have been inadequacies in regards to the safeguarding of the personal health information (PHI) (CAPH, 2018). The California Department of Public Health indicates that there were 120 cases of information breaches when the data was collected and analyzed between 2012 and 2015. This number is significant for an organization of the status of the ABC Health Care.

Barriers to Quality

ABC Health Care makes use of a system called the Advanced Patient-Centered Excellence (Leslie et al., 2017). This system serves as both the electronic health record (EHR) as well as the electronic medical record (EMR). At least it has facilitated the technological shift as mandated by the federal authorizes as part of the healthcare reforms nationwide. The challenge is that it has still not facilitated the elimination of personal health information breaches (Boman & Kruse, 2017; Qureshi, 2016).

2. THE INTERVENTION

The Intervention being Proposed

The TechMed system has been determined to have a couple of strengths, and this is based on how Jones Regional Medical Center is able to mitigate a potential catastrophe. At least no patient incidences resulted from the thirty-six hours of failure (Rothstein, 2016). Nonetheless, that is still a significant challenge, and a facility of the status of the ABC Health Care cannot afford to have such a derailment. It would lose its reputation; and due to the fact that there are huge numbers of clients, there could be frequent diversion of ambulances as well as postponement of critical missions (Qureshi, 2016). The ABC Health Care needs to work towards promoting change. The stakeholders may also need to monitor improvements, and this can happen with periodic tallies. At least this can chart the progress in the right direction.

Process Defect

Migration into IT-based platform is the current trend; and even if manual reports help in the time of disaster, the ABC Health Care should have a system with enhanced integrity in order to minimize the need for the maintenance of manual systems (Agris & Spandorfer, 2016). There should be strategies to improve on the accuracy, meaningfulness, as well as efficiency; and this is particularly with respect to the use of the clinical pieces of data at the Department of Nursing (Rothstein, 2016). The ABC Health Care hopes that with improvements, it will regain its legacy of the unsurpassed patient care. The stakeholders have pledged not to stop in their mission towards the integration of the high-tech clinical operations with medical research.

Aim (Objective)

Jones Regional Medical Center is already planning on replacing the obsolete TechMed technology; and, therefore, there is no justification for the ABC Health Care to implement it. It is obsolete, and it is twelve years old. The fragility of this system has since been demonstrated clearly by the failure suffered at Jones Regional Medical Center. The challenges which the ABC Health Care has are about data breaches; and this could be addressed by gathering the views of all categories of legitimate stakeholders and making the necessary improvements (Agris & Spandorfer, 2016). The objective is to stop the breaches as soon as possible.

3. STRATEGY FOR IMPLEMENTATION

The Steps to Implement the Intervention

Weak systems pose critical challenges towards the attainment of the healthcare-related goals. It is important to appreciate that performance may never be assessed in an adequate manner if the health information system’s data is inaccurate, incomplete, or even untimely. Therefore, performing an exhaustive data gathering and a study to determine the feasibility for improvement is critical towards facilitating success (Fernandez, 2017).

Measures

The ABC Health Care ought to take measures towards having sensors installed so that they can be raising alerts every time a breach happens. The system itself ought to have the means of detecting incidences as well as the notification of the responsible stakeholders. It should then be determined if the information thought to have been breached should continue being part of the white-list of not. A white-list is the list of items which are being considered to be trustworthy and usable (Qureshi, 2016). In case the information is questionable, it should be quarantined. Otherwise, it may be contained. The next step is to determine it as being ‘restricted data’ (Agris & Spandorfer, 2016). It is ultimately recovered. In essence, the use of the Advanced Patient-Centered Excellence should continue as long as the changes are made.

Barriers to Change

There could be human barriers, and these may be associated with the beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. Professional barriers have a lot to do with the nature of the jobs in question. Third category of barriers is technical in nature. These are related to IT and computers. Organizational barriers are associated with managerial issues. There are those regulatory and legal barriers, and these have a lot to do with regulations and laws in question.

Simple Rules

There should be the collection of every relevant item. This should be followed by the development of a process. This starts with the designing of the logical data model, followed by the design of the physical data model. The stakeholders should proceed with the building of a data warehouse. The project is then implemented and documented. These simple rules are imperative in regards to achieving success.

Cost Implications

The financial barriers have a lot to do with the availability of money and other forms of funding (Fernandez, 2017). The exact price of the system is determined upon the undertaking of precise pre-implementation analysis. The cost could be inhibitive since the organization could be facing constraints. The cost is in terms of pre-implementation analyses, licensing, special touches, and data conversion. Training and assistance does cost a significant amount, and hence the need to ensure that what is suggested is really workable.

References

Agris, J.L., & Spandorfer, J.M. (2016). HIPAA compliance and training: A perfect storm for professionalism education? Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 44(4), 652-656. DOI: 10.1177/1073110516684812

Boman, M., & Kruse, E. (2017). Supporting global health goals with information and communications technology. Global Health Action, 10(S3), N.PAG-N.PAG. DOI: 10.1080/16549716.2017.1321904

CAPH (2018). CAPH members. California Association of Public Hospitals and Health Systems. Retrieved from https://caph.org/memberdirectory/

Fernandez, E. (2017, August 07). UCSF Medical Center Ranks as Best Hospital in California. University of California San Francisco. Retrieved from https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2017/08/407991/ucsf-medical-center-ranks-best-hospital-california

Leslie, M., Paradis, E., Gropper, M.A., Kitto, S., Reeves, S., & Pronovost, P. (2017, August). An ethnographic study of health information technology use in three intensive care units. Health Services Research, 52(4), 1330-1348. DOI: 10.1111/1475-6773.12466

Qureshi, S. (2016, Jan.). Creating a better world with information and communication technologies: Health equity. Information Technology for Development, 22(1), 1-14. DOI: 10.1080/02681102.2015.1121585

Rothstein, M.A. (2016). The end of the HIPAA Privacy Rule? Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, 44(2), 352-358. DOI: 10.1177/1073110516654128