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Quality Improvement: ABC Health Care

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Quality Improvement: ABC Health Care

ABC Health Care 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. 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. Instead of TechMed, the 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).

The Intervention which the ABC Health Care Should Make

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).

Besides, migration into IT-based platform is the current trend; and even if manual reports help in the time of disaster, the ABC Health Care hopes to have a system with enhanced integrity in order to minimize the need for the maintenance of manual systems. Work is underway 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 these improvements, it will regain its legacy of the unsurpassed patient care. The stakeholders have pledged not to stop or slow in their mission towards the integration of the high-tech clinical operations with medical research (Agris & Spandorfer, 2016).

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 Strategies for Implementation

Weak systems pose critical challenges towards the attainment of the healthcare-related goals. Firstly, 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, the first step is performing an exhaustive data gathering and a study to determine the feasibility for improvement (Fernandez, 2017).

The ABC Health Care ought to have 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.

Conclusion

The ABC Health Care is a reputable organization, and it has been successful in addressing serious medical conditions. Indeed, this is the reason it has honored both regionally and nationally alike. Nonetheless, there is the need to address the information breaches. Even though the TechMed has not been determined to cause breaches, it is obsolete and this is why even Jones Regional Medical Center is planning on having it entirely replaced in two years. The ABC Health System has a working system called Advanced Patient-Centered Excellence. Even though there are breaches, this system is not yet obsolete. It can work in an effective manner if improvements can be made (Fernandez, 2017).

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