Information Technology in Healthcare Essay

Information technology has undoubtedly played important role of transforming the operation, management and the overall performance of many organizations. Similarly, it’s expected that information technology would show more or less same impact of results in the healthcare organizations. That is, the employment of IT system in the provision of health care services will mitigate the quality of service provision in the industry. Generally, the term â€Å"quality† is used not in its simplest form but has been used in its complex form, which is primarily meant to incorporate improvement of the functioning of the different healthcare departments together with the affiliated organizations which form part or participate in one way or another in the process of delivering health care service (Berg, 2001). Despite the fact that there has been increased investment in the healthcare industry, recent research has shown that the consumption of IT services/products is far much less in the healthcare industry as compared with the consumption rate of organizations in other sectors. Moreover, the large world population in developed countries or states like in the UK, USA among others access to high-quality healthcare services. While it’s known that not all individuals in the developed nations are well up, the poor and the middle class group experience a lot of obstacles as they endeavor to access healthcare services and their related products such as acquisition of healthcare insurance cover and payment of hospital bills. With the low consumption rate of the IT services by the healthcare organizations in most developed nations, this has led to provisions of meager services to the poor, but it’s postulated changing to intensive IT consumption would mitigate the situation (Fournier, 2003). Significance of Using EMR system There are several reasons for the embracing of IT systems in the healthcare industry. Depending on different perspective of the focus, the use IT system has been used to bring an evolution in the healthcare provision. Like in other industries dealing with provisions of services and products different from those of healthcare industry, the implementation of IT services in the healthcare sector is aimed at bringing an evolution both in the performance and quality of the services delivered to the consumers. For the last two or three decades back, many organizations have put more efforts in the funding of healthcare service provision, in order to have a change from the traditional record keeping practices. The adoption of the E-recording has thus been viewed as major step towards achieving a greater improvement in the healthcare overall performance. The consumption of IT services though is at low rates, the benefit accrued from the few ways in which it has been absorbed is enormous. In the area of medical records and record keeping, healthcare industry is adopting to the IT system to solve the problem of complexity in their system. First and foremost, the utilization of IT systems in medical record and recording reduces the time of production, spaces and transfer duration, thus leading to overall decrease in the expenditure cost of the record management (Berg, 2001). Facility evaluation The EMR facility is a sophisticated instrument which comprises of different parts for the accomplishment of the recording and storage of healthcare data and information. The equipment’s components include both computer hardware as well as software that support its data processing, storage operations and management. The major physical parts of the facility are the CPU together with its accessory components, while the non-physical component included the operating software and the special EMR software, which permit the performance of multiples tasks of healthcare. The special software is an advanced one which enables data entry through use of clicks, reducing the amount of keyboard typing. This means that the EMR facility supports the input of enormous data into the healthcare records with ease. The advanced software not only wires information in the word formats but it also supports the use of the imagery or photographic works, meaning that it’s a complete storage system of healthcare information. Cost of EMR system The EMR system is a model that occupies the least space in data storage systems. Though it has a multi-task purpose, the costs perhaps is at moderate rate. EMR costs are computed from the various variables or components which are needed in the implementation of the system within an organization. The costs of implementing EMR are identified in two classes, viz the purchasing and installation system cost and the maintenance cost. Usually, prior to the installation of the EMR system, the CPU and computer accessories must be purchased. Additionally, the clinicians and physician are without the knowledge of developing the superior software which allows the carrying out of the various functions of data storage and processing. Currently, the prices of a computer range from $ 7000 to &7500, while the software prices are estimated in the range of $`1000 to $1500 which are inclusive of the license charges. The grant installation expenses of the hardware and the software within the healthcare premise is approximated at $ 3500, but this quote is not inclusive of the implementation expenses which incorporates the costs incurred during the adoption of the new systems. A part from the equipment and software costs, other indirect expenses are incurred in the courses of running the systems: the maintenance costs which are at about $ 2000 per annum (Fournier, 2003). Regulation implications The utilization of the EMR systems in hospitals will have great impacts on the regulation and management of information within the healthcare provider organizations. Among the anticipated outcomes is that the use of this system would save time taken in retrieving patient’s information as well as hasten transferring of the information to any other organization or party where it’s needed. By doing so, both insurance organizations and organizations acting as referral healthcare services providers will have broader based of the assessment the patient’s health progress. While this system employed Electronic signatures that are unique, it’s a practice that reduces the risks associated with the heavy use of personalized signatures that can change with time or maybe forgotten. Barriers to EMR systems As revealed in a number of healthcare organization that have endeavored to install the new EMR system in their organization, there are several challenges are generally faced by firms implementing the system. According to the disclosed information, the initial outlay or capital is extremely high to be met within the current budget on healthcare development. The lean budgetary range bars the purchase of crucial and basic equipments such as power backups to ensure data inputs and output operations are not halted due blackouts or brown out that adversely affect the quality of service delivery. Considering that most have workers have been used to the old system of paper work, it’s undoubtedly overt that most of them will be disturbed of the implementation of the system (Miller, 2004). The employment of EMR system mean that much work would be accomplished by a few clinicians and physician workers, a case that actually acts as a threat to job security for some of the employees. To take the full benefits of the systems, it’s very important for the training of the staffs, particularly to empower them in the use of installed system. This calls for the payment of the training service from external organization/firms as the organization has got no training personnel with the required knowledge, experience and proficient of the installed system. The hiring of the new trainers is not ease as their cost falls out of the current budget. The handling of the new system of EMR also demands the use of shared devices such as serves, which implies that the company would have to hire additional staff to maintain the networks and the servers. Fraud and waste issues The implementation of the EMR systems within the organization has the ability of curbing certain problems experienced in the course of management and activity accomplishment. Usually, most of the organization depending on the traditional paper work recording depicted a lot of movements from one place to another. This indicates poor integration or communication between individuals at different departments. Sometimes, this increases the duration of the patient’s stay within the healthcare facility. Thus, the employment of the EMR system reduces the waste of healthcare facilities by eliminating or reducing many personnel movements, meanwhile leading to improvement on patient’s safety and general service delivery. Though EMR systems is appealing way of improving the clinicians and physicians work effectiveness, high risks on privacy and confidence are associated with this kind of system. System hacking together with ease of reproducing the data in this system acts as the greatest threat to the use of the methodology (Miller, 2004) EMR Implementation The following are steps of implementing an EMR system: †¢ Selection of the most suitable EMR to be adopted by the organization †¢ Compose a lead team to campaign for the EMR system †¢ Generate an implementation plan †¢ List/choosing the required equipments and software †¢ Training the organization’s staffs †¢ Select security provider to the data/ information sites †¢ Input the selected data of interest Timeline The first day will be the discussion on the redundancy experienced within the organizations so as to determine the appropriate EMR system. The second day will be formation of a steering team that would work together towards ensuring success of the project. Third will be generation of a list of items: equipments and software that would be used. Then, this will be followed by the installation of the system that would take a bout a week. This will run concurrently with the training of the staff members on the new system though the training will be extended by another week for practical skill acquisition.