Advantages of Strategic Planning
In spite of overexposure of the concept by business press, the conception of strategic planning has still been an obscure concept. However, if an organisation, particularly pertaining to the public sector, takes the process seriously, then can generate genuine value towards its stakeholders. Strategic planning can be simply defined as a procedure planning by means of which the organisation is aiming to achieve a certain position and the blueprint involves details of the actions that various stakeholders are going to undertake. Inspired from the views of Abdelhak, Grostick, & Hanken (2014), it can be opined that a public organisation that is moving without a strategic plan is actually not planning to develop its service and this is certainly a good implication for the society or community against which it is projected. The organisations in the public health sector should keep in mind that the business environment of the health service industry of Australia is fast evolving and if they do not follow a certain guideline for future development, they would be lost in the tough market competition.
A strategic plan is usually a framework that determines the direction in which everybody involved with the organisation should be performing and also the subtle suggestions which the organisation should be following in order to make everybody work in the desired direction. In order to optimise the future potential of the organisation, Aquino Shluzas et al. (2014), opines that the ideal strategic plan should include the following:
- A strategic analysis highlighting the major strengths, weaknesses, threats as well as opportunities
- The explanation of strategies as well as tactics employed by the organisation
- Details of the methods implemented for performance monitoring
Development of a strategic plan helps an organisation to define the scope of the major activities undertaken by the organisation. It also helps the organisation to review the motivation level of the employees, calculate future costs and employ the means of support that would help in achievement of the future targets. Moreover, Azaria et al. (2016), opines that this would also help in the better understanding of the external and internal environmental factors that have been affecting the business. This, in turn, would create an awareness among the upper management so that they can take the advantages of the future facing business opportunities. Again, this also helps the management and the executives to decide what strategies as well as tactics they should undertake in order to accept the business opportunities and avoid the potential threats. In fact, Ben-Assuli (2015), implies that the strategic planning phase makes the potential change drivers (major employee) to realise that the upper management wants steady progress of the company and as an impact the also gives their best to fulfil the organisational objectives. A significant part of the strategic plan is the employee motivation planning. This helps the companies to keep track of the performances of the employees and how they are working towards development of basic skills and added potential to match the future standards of the organisation.
In the context of health information system of the public hospitals ne major concern is the dubiousness regarding the implementation of automation of health database management. Many scholar have raised queries like if the number on internal staff is sufficient and they have the necessary calibre to maintain the information collection and management system, is it really necessary to introduce automation as incur additional costs? Hence in the following SWOT analysis a detailed perspective assessment have been undertaken to identify if the Health Information management system (HIS) is actually beneficial or not. The first major advantage is the easier access to patients’ data, which is particularly beneficial from the perspective of the health care providers. According to the ideas of Cresswell et al. (2017), the online digital database of the patient’s data enables the requisite individual data of the patients to be available with a few clicks. Something, from crises periods the doctors requires to recheck the test reports of a certain patient. Influenced from the views of Detwiller, M., & Petillion, W. (2014), it can be opined that in case of the availability of a common patients’ information database, the doctors do not need to go looking for the IPD files. A simple ID entry into the online database would give him or her access to all essential documents and hence timely decisions of treatments ensue.
Advantages of Health Information Management Systems
The second benefit of Health Information digital database management is the high level cost effectiveness. This database helps in cutting down the cost incurred a lot of manual work that is generally performed by health care professionals. Influenced from the findings of Hsiao et al. (2018), it can be opined that the flow of patients in the public hospitals is generally high and particularly for big hospitals with beds over 200, manual management is time taking and often formalities like documentation and past record submission of the patient’s medical history makes a delay in the treatment of the respective patients. However, Jones et al. (2014), opines that the electronic data base enables in the cutting down of manpower and this saves a great amount of cost that could have been incurred by the resources that are required for manual recording of data including the cost incurred by the human capital.
The third advantage of the HIS system is the improvement in the efficiency of the health care service. As per Lee, Bagheri & Kao (2015), development and maintenance of software for the service of health information management reduces the scope of human intervention in the process and thus the chances of human problems like as fatigue, miscommunication and also lacking of focus. The automated software delivers the same performance however be the work pressure and delivers the outcome with same level of accuracy day in or day out. There are also scope for reduction of human errors (casual or intentional), if processes are maintained with the HIS software. An example can be provided. Based on the instance provided by Levesque et al. (2015), it can be opined that during the time of billing one IDP patient for medicines with the utilisation of the HIS software, the bills can hardly be wrong as the software detects the price based on exactly the same drugs that the nurse have billed for, unless and until there is shortage of the drug currently or a doctor introduces a prompt change in his prescription of drugs. As informed by Milevska et al. (2017), the rate of per unit cost of every drug is recorded in the software and the process of automation reduces the chances of misinterpretation of costs.
The fifth advantage of the HIS implementation is data security. In public hospitals one major challenge regarding patients’ data is maintaining the safety of the data. The maintenance of online data enables the authorised personnel to access the HIS database and that too in minimum possible time. The process of the data storage is also easy.
In the end it can be implied that improved access of the patients’ data means improvement of the work efficiency and also improvement in the patients’ care and in the end this improves the profitability of the public hospitals which is a big concern for the Australian restaurants nowadays.
The installation of the HIS software is a cost incurring process actually and it should be understood that the level of revenue generation is not as much compared to the private nursing care homes. As per Nguyen, Bellucci & Nguyen (2014), the average number of aged population in Australia is increasing and this implies that the amount of patient admissions in the upcoming day would increase and in turn the working population who are earning and are liable to pay the bills are reducing. Hence the major question here is that whether high end expenditure incurred by high technology would be applicable economically by the Australian government or not.
Cost-Effectiveness
It is evident that technology is fast evolving and as such the HIS software would also incur new updates and regular up gradation and bring in new ways to handling the software (Sligo et al. 2017). This would incur an additional IT cost and the elder staff who are not so flamboyant with technology would face much issues.
Over dependence on technological assets can incur some disadvantages. The computer system that is required for working of the HIS technology might incur some technological errors. As Tadesse, Gebeyoh & Tadesse (2014), informs, this issue would be fatally affecting the Accident and Emergency department. A common information system interconnects all departments. It can be supposed that if a person on emergency approaches the A&E department and due to technical issues the retrieval of the data of blood analysis becomes problematic, the other following procedures of treatment would also get delayed. This can even result in the death of the patient.
The roles of the health information management professional are changing nowadays. Previously the professionals used to etch the records on paper. Nowadays with the benefits of emerging technology, have enabled the HIM professionals to execute the process of collection, storage, coding, interpretation and application of these data to render active support to decision making of the clinicians, financial management of the management as well as personal health management of the patients. As an impact, Wager, Lee, & Glaser (2017), opines that nowadays, the role of the HIS professionals have become increasingly vital and the number of HIM professionals with HIS knowledge or expertise have increased. It is estimated that the number of HIS professionals would increase by 49% by 2025. According to the provided data of the Labour Department of Australia, about 2000 new graduates are getting admitted to the hospitals or joining new crash courses for emerging as HIS professionals.
One major threat to the health care information management is the breach of data. Data breach is difficult when the records are kept on paper. However, the electronic database enables the access to the entire data of all the patients in the hospitals. The HIS professionals who are dealing with the patients data can easily leak data from the database. In fact, as Waterson (2014), highlights, statistics confirm that 49% of the health care data that have been breached from the online data bases have been operated from the end of the insiders of the data management department who have sound IT skills. This data is usually extracted to blackmail the hospital management or the patient parties on various grounds and often for committing tax fraud. Unintentional data frauds can also take place (Williamset et al. 2017). Recording of an individual patient’s data against the database of another patient have been a regular phenomenon. This occurs due to the casual approach of the employees or at times due to the incapability of the HIM workers to handle online databases.
Figure 1: SWOT analysis model
(Source: Created by the researcher)
Identification of current issues impacting Health Information Management that can be addressed in the strategic plan.
Patient Data Access
According to the Hi-tech Act of Australia, the authorities of the public hospitals have to display the meaningful use of Electronic Health Requirements within the end of the third quarter of 2018. Otherwise the public hospitals would have to incur reduction in the Medicare reimbursements. Besides the government is also considering the creation of the common state wise HIS database that would facilitate the electronic sharing of healthcare information between various health care organisations that are affiliated to the government. As per Wu et al. (2017), the communication of various professionals through exchange of health care data leads to the presentation of new standards of health care which the doctors are considering before implementation of health care services.
Health care information management also requires a mandatory set up for the exchange of health insurance data by the end of 2019. This would include a combination of technologies including content management, Customer Relationship Management and e-commerce and so on. The forum of health care organisations have also set up an organisation for the large investments in HER, HIS as well as data analytics (Xu et al. 2014). The mobile health management is another developing trend in the domain of health care informatics management. In order to bring in a mobility in the health care and shared decision making process, a mobile/BYOD policy have been implemented in order to fulfil the privacy requirements of the health care service receivers and enables them to preserve and access their own medical data in their electronic devices and that also under full security.
Discussion of strategic solutions for ways in which issues related to Health Information Management will be addressed
There is a greater need to address the problems like delay in patient care. In this context, Williams et al. (2017), opines that the EHR templates that the templates that are being filled by the hospital authority regarding new entries should have a notification channel that connects the doctors personal cell phones or PCs with the EHR data. Based on the contents the doctors are able to realise what ways are to be adapted to treat which patients.
The EHR templates should have routing numbers which the patient parties can utilise instantly in order to seek a second opinion from any other doctor of the health care centres or the hospitals to verify if the test and studies allocated to the patient are actually required or not.
In this context, Waterson, (2014), provides one unique solution. The end outcomes of the patient’s test and/or studies can be recorded in the electronic database parallel with the doctor’s personal database. As an outcome, when the doctors invigilate the respective patients, they can enter the routing number of the patient to see the end results of the latest conducted tests of the particular patient. The data optimisation teams should also be provided to access the doctor’s portals so that they can check the update of the latest data in the portals frequently. This would ensure increased patients safety as in many instances, the patients’ tests data do not reach the doctors if they are printed and filed. Rather, Lee, Bagheri & Kao (2015), opines that about 70% of the doctors of the public hospitals are acquainted with the HIS programs and hence they should start having personal data base of every patient check-up. After allocation of regular duties, the doctors should take up the responsibility of accessing the codes against the database of individual patients in order to gain a conception of the current status of the patients and decide the treatment strategy even before physically visiting the patients.
Efficiency in Healthcare
Stakeholder involvement is one of the important credibility criteria of the success of electronic information management. The major stakeholders in this context are the patients, the patient parties, the database managers, the EHR recorders, HIS professionals, the assigned doctors and the health care providers (Detwiller & Petillion, 2014). The doctors in this context should have a separate portal for data access and all other stakeholders can access the single data base. Out of them the patients can only access the database of the respective patient codes. The database managers are liable to assign permissions to every other stakeholder to access respective data. The data handling is another important concern in this context. The official portal handling of the respective hospital should have a certain set of terms and conditions. The patients are liable to share respective data with other doctors also. They are also liable to get the soft copies of all the tests that are being conducted of the patient during the tenure of admittance. The doctors can also similarly share data from their own database for discussion with peers on particular cases.
References
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