Week 1 of Management Information Systems in Healthcare DISCUSSION AND PROJECT INSTRUCTIONS

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Week 1 MHA6120-Management Information Systems in Healthcare Lecture

Introduction to Healthcare Information Management

The collection of healthcare information in the United States can be traced back from the nineteenth century when clinical medical records were formalized to document treatment, management, and outcomes of care (Gillum, 2013). Today, healthcare information has become robust to support clinical and business processes. Information systems now facilitate the following:

· Patient throughput

· Documentation of treatment

· Management for every episode

· Continuum of patient care

· Equitable staffing

· Data management for regulatory requirements and compliance

· Performance or quality improvement

· Risk management

· Billing and coding

· Collection

· Materials management

· Resource management

All of the above processes are critical to organizational success.

Healthcare information management is the process of acquiring and analyzing clinical and business data for the purpose of achieving critical measures of cost, quality, patient outcomes, and financial outcomes, as well as regulatory compliance. Health information technology (HIT) supports health information management through clinical and business applications and processes. According to Zeng (2009), The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act (a provision of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) defines HIT as “hardware, software, integrated technologies or related licenses, intellectual property, upgrades, or packaged solutions sold as services that are designed for or support the use by healthcare entities or patients for the electronic creation, maintenance, access, or exchange of health information.”

References:

· Gillum, R. (2013). From papers to the electronic tablet: A brief history of the clinical medical record with lessons for the digital age. American Journal of Medicine, 126(10), 853–857. doi:10.1016/j.amjmed.2013.03.024

· Zeng, X. (2009). Redefining the roles of health information management professionals in health information technology. Perspectives in Health Information Management, 6(Summer), 1f. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2781729/

Health Information Technology (HIT)

Review each tab to learn more.

· Hardware

· Software

· Healthcare Scanner

To identify the patient and related treatment such as pharmacological products, laboratory and X-ray results, etc.

Wristband Printer To create the identification band for the patient

Mobile Touch Computer, Tablet For portability in data entry and verification

Link to Resource

https://www.vertitechit.com/history-healthcare-technology/

Additional Materials

From your course textbook, Information Systems for Healthcare Management, review the following chapters:

· Connecting Strategic Dots: Does HIT Matter?

· HIT Architecture and Infrastructure

· HIT Service Management

· Applications: Electronic Health Records

From the Internet, review the following:

· Gillum, R. (2013). From papyrus to the electronic tablet: A brief history of the clinical medical record with lessons for the digital age. American Journal of Medicine, 126(10), 853–857. doi:10.1016/j.amjmed.2013.03.024

· Grandia, L. (2018). Healthcare information systems: A look at the past, present, and future. Retrieved from https://www.healthcatalyst.com/healthcare-information-systems-past-present-future

· Palgon, G. (2016, May 02). The history of health information management: From then to now [Web log message]. Retrieved from https://www.liaison.com/blog/2017/05/02/history-heath-information-management-now/

· VertitechIT. (2018, March 11). The history of healthcare technology and the evolution of EHR. Retrieved from https://www.vertitechit.com/history-healthcare-technology/

· Zeng, X. (2009). Redefining the roles of health information management professionals in health information technology. Perspectives in Health Information Management, 6(Summer), 1f. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2781729/

HIT Service Management

In order to achieve the critical measures of cost, efficiency, and quality, HIT Service Management (ITSM) is a framework in delivering customer-focused IT services through service support and service delivery. ITSM service support consists of comprehensive processes that include change management, incident management, problem management, release management, and configuration management (Glandon, Smaltz, & Slovensky, 2013).

ITSM Service Support

According to Glandon et al. (2013), ITSM service support consists of comprehensive processes that include:

· Change management under ITSM service support facilitates the assessment of risks involved in system or application changes.

· Incident management includes processes that manage resolutions of trouble calls or incidents.

· Problem management tracks and trends incidents, analyzes root causes, and implements sustaining solutions.

· Release management includes activities involving the release of new applications or operating systems.

· Configuration management puts all support processes together and documents them in a configuration management database.

ITSM service delivery processes include service-level management, availability management, capacity management, financial management, and service continuity management.

ITSM Service Delivery

The other side of the ITSM spectrum is service delivery, processes that ensure IT services are operationalized and capable of long-term availability even under unexpected situations such as natural disasters that will potentially disrupt services (Glandon et al., 2013).

Review each tab to learn more.

Service-level management

Processes aim to identify business processes or in the case of healthcare, clinical processes that are critical to patient throughput, documentation, regulatory compliance, coding and billing, resource management, and performance improvement, to name a few.

Availability management

Ensures that the IT infrastructure and support are available to meet both clinical and business functions.

Capacity management

Ensures that infrastructure is capable to support clinical and business functions.

Financial management

Focuses on evaluation and decision making related to the cost of IT services.

Service continuity management

Focuses on ensuring the availability of IT services during unexpected service interruption.

The complexity of healthcare services and delivery demands a framework that will support both clinical and business processes, structure, and outcomes. HIT service management, under the conceptual structure of IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL), is a comprehensive IT approach that meets complex needs and critical outcomes of healthcare delivery and services.

Additional Materials

From your course textbook, Information Systems for Healthcare Management, review the following chapter:

· HIT Service Management

From the Internet, review the following:

· Information Technology Services. (2015). ITS service management: Key elements. Retrieved from UCSC website: https://its.ucsc.edu/itsm/servicemgmt.html

· NYS Forum Inc. (2015). Best practices for IT service management. Retrieved from https://www.nysforum.org/events/4_30_2015/Final.pdf

HIT Architecture and Infrastructure

A review of the literature suggests that IT architecture and IT infrastructure are often used interchangeably or used as a single concept. In this lecture, we will explore IT architecture and IT infrastructure as separate concepts.

For a healthcare administration student with no background in information technology, the concept of IT architecture and infrastructure can be very confusing. To simplify our understanding and to better understand IT architecture and infrastructure, let’s reflect on quality or performance improvement concepts. Architecture is related to processes such as clinical processes, financial processes, and medical coding and billing. Each of these processes are components of our organization, and in IT architecture, these components are part of the design of our HIT architecture. In contrast, IT infrastructure is related to the structural components of performance improvement. IT infrastructure is the physical setup or physical or cloud storage or housing for IT activities, hardware, software, talent, and ancillary equipment and services that facilitates and protects applications from any disaster and ensures data backup and security. IT Infrastructure is the meat and bones, while IT architecture is the human organs that serve different functions to achieve the end results of a healthy, functioning, and efficient body of organization.

It is important to note that HIT infrastructure must be robust enough to accommodate the requirement or design of clinical and business architecture and potential expansion or conversion in the future. Inadequate HIT infrastructure may limit the upgrade and expansion of HIT architecture. Chester and Allenby (2017) states, “infrastructure are facing multiple challenges including inflexible physical assets, unstable and insufficient funding, maturation, utilization, increasing interdependencies, climate change, social and environmental awareness, changes in coupled technology systems, lack of transdisciplinary expertise, geopolitical security, and wicked complexity.” Healthcare IT infrastructure must be agile and flexible to meet the challenges and complexities of healthcare environment and processes. Healthcare managers and administrators must keep in mind that HIT architecture and infrastructure innovations are occurring at a rapid speed.

Reference:

· Chester, M., & Allenby, B. (2017). Toward adaptive infrastructure: Flexibility and agility in a non-stationarity age. Retrieved from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/23789689.2017.1416846?journalCode=tsri20

Additional Materials

From your course textbook, Information Systems for Healthcare Management, review the following chapter:

· HIT Architecture and Infrastructure