Business Management Homework

Preparing to Conduct Business Research, Part 2

La’Twon Hordge, Travona James, Desean Stephens, Kashmir Spells

RES/351

April 19, 2016

Professor Jonte’ Lee

Preparing to Conduct Business Research, Part 2

Conducting business research in any business is key. Business owners must be able to identify dilemmas and have the ability to be able to resolve them. Researching is a crucial and intense process when addressing issues and concerns in the workplace. Achieving business objectives will ultimately help maintain, run and grow a business efficiently.

Key Business Objectives

In the world of MedStar, business planning creates the foundation for a comprehensive list of business objectives. MedStar faces many issues within; however, it's a profitable business. According to Healthcare Informatics (2016), “MedStar Health, the largest nongovernment health care provider in the Baltimore-Washington, D.C., region, navigates a dramatic shift from competing by offering integrated, comprehensive medical services to offering lower-cost preventive care. MedStar operated nine hospitals, but realized that its long-held objective of increasing revenue and profits at those venues was unsustainable, given the outcries over runaway medical costs”.

A few key business objectives would include profitability which entails the revenue staying controlled in both operations and production. Productivity is another important business objective. When staff is given the proper resources and training, they can remain as productive as possible, allowing the business to run more smoothly. Customer service is considered to be a key business objective as well. Maintaining outstanding customer service helps to generate repeat revenue and retain happy and satisfied clients, which should be the ultimate goal. More importantly, marketing is a must. According to Chron (2016), “Marketing is more than creating advertising and getting customer input on product changes. It is understanding consumer buying trends, being able to anticipate product distribution needs and developing business partnerships that help your organization to improve market share”.

Questions to be Researched

When it comes to business researching, there are several questions to think about or consider during the process. The research questions can be based on the key objectives. Some questions of relevancy to MedStar would be: 1) what are the general trends that are effecting the business; 2) who is MedStar’s competitors; 3) how did the hacking and virus effect the trust and integrity of patients; 4) what improvements can be made to prevent a network shut down from possibly happening again; and 5) what is the vision for future security and what would be the best roadmap for getting there.

Hypotheses and Variables

According to “Research Methods Knowledge Base” (2006), the purpose of identifying hypotheses and variables in this computer hacking catastrophe is to narrow down this problem into something that is testable. Key variables to be considered in this case are the patients and customers of MedStar – are they going to seek health care elsewhere. Also, what will happen to money and gross revenue after security is no longer compromised – will employees quit and seek other employment? With computer hacking becoming a wide epidemic in modern social networking and IT (Information Technology), people will not feel as secure if their information is repeatedly compromised. These variables are all dependent on how the company plans to orchestrate a new way to protect the company, its patients and its customers from cyber – thieves, whom continue to remain untraceable.

Ethical Considerations

From an ethical standpoint, people seeking health care embrace the privacy, and not being required to share information with anyone. People deserve to have privacy in their lives. HIPPA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) establishes national standards to protect individual’s medical records and other personal health information and applies to health plans, health care clearinghouses, and those health care providers that conduct certain health care transactions electronically. With such a problem with the unwanted ransomware, it compromises the ethical standards that the company holds. There is no moral in remotely shutting down the operation of a well-known medical practice. It sends the message that no one is safe anywhere and jeopardizes the trust of the establishment. Patients are unsure of whether or not they can maintain confidence with the said organization. Patients' confidence can be an issue even after the problem has been remedied.

Implications of Ethical Considerations

In the Scenario with MedStar’s unauthorized breach in their system, it is clear that there was a series of unethical decisions made by someone when they decided to attack patients and customers’ private information. These technical issues that have set huge barriers between being more effective to patients have caused MedStar to resort to the oldest, yet a modernly inconvenient way of record keeping – pen and paper. The pen and paper method slows doctors and health care providers down from fast and more accurate production. Another unethical consideration would be paying hacker’s money just to regain control of their computer system. Money that used for new technology, wages, and other considered expenses, is being used to keep hackers from gaining unauthorized access. The attempt to negatively impact an institution designed to save lives and care for others is, in fact, troublesome.

Purpose of the Research

The purpose of the research is to determine the cause of the outage at MedStar Health Facility as a result of a Virus. The outage paralyzed operations as a consequence of the security breach, and the research is meant to discover all components behind this occurrence. There is a need to determine the weak areas in the organization's security systems and also, to ensure the restoration of all data. Doing so will ensure that patient and doctor records are secured, and fully recovered.

Research Design Approach

A quantitative research design will be the approach. It involves collection and conversion of data into the numerical form. Qualitative research design is also applicable, considering the need to take into consideration the study of technological aspects which were breached in the system. In quantitative research design, hypotheses will be formulated and tested to determine their relevance. Sophisticated computer packages in the organization may also be used in the case of qualitative research. The quantitative research design is easier to use, and has high chances of producing more accurate results, depending on the sample sizes used during the research.

Determine if the Key Variables Are Qualitative, Quantitative or Both.

There is a relationship between the various variables which will be used in the study. Both dependent and independent variables will be used (Cooper & Schindler, 2014). People in the organization are bound to be consulted during the study, to gather information on exactly what happened in the entity. The results of the study ought to be described eventually with complete findings presented to the concerned parties. The key variables, in this case, are quantitative. Percentages of employees with information regarding the occurrence of the security breach in the entity need to be interviewed; hence, quantitative data will be relied upon as compared to qualitative data.

Variables from an Operational Standpoint

The variables from an operational standpoint deal with how the IT security breach affects the company’s ability to continue to generate revenue, what new and improved IT infrastructure needs to be established to prevent further breaches, as well as patient’s confidence in MedStar’s ability to protect their private information.

From an operational standpoint keeping MedStar profitable is key. When breaches such of this happen, a company like MedStar that deals with individuals' most personal and intimate data has to regain the trust of not only its patients but the health care community as a whole. Although other companies incurred attacks, in the same manner, it doesn’t lessen the public relations windfall such an event has. These types of breaches effect MedStar’s ability to generate revenue short-term as well as long-term revenue. Operationally, MedStar must try to quantify the damage from a cost perspective. MedStar must also conduct timely and swift business research regarding their current systems deficiencies and its necessary improvements. A cost analysis is needed.

Conclusion

To effectively resolve MedStar’s problems business research most be performed and properly. Identifying questions to be researched and determining the hypothesis and variables are an integral part to effectively researching. Knowing the purpose of the research and determining how the research is conducting can not only save time but money as well.

References