Systems Project Management: Hospital Information Systems - Report Example

?Systems Project Management: Hospital Information Systems Systems Project Management: Hospital Information Systems Introduction Hospital information systems are comprehensively integrated information systems that are designed to manage administrative, medical, legal, and financial aspects of the hospital among other related hospital serving processing activities. The traditional ways of data management applied only paper based information processing that requires physical movement, acquisition, and presentation of data (Prokosch and Dudeck, 1995). Such systems are cumbersome to use and they are prone to damage and loss of data. Moreover, the mode of data referencing seemed to be difficult and time consuming. Therefore, adoption and implementation of information systems in hospitals will automatically increase the efficiency and effectiveness of data interaction thereby increasing the quality of services offered in the hospital set up. Hospital information systems are massive, integrated system aimed at supporting hospitals’ comprehensive information requirements that include patient, ancillary, and financial management. It should be noted that hospitals have become extremely complex. Moreover, they have large units and departments that need to be administered from a central unit of management as a mean of coordinating care to patients (Velde, 1992; Pg. 342). Therefore, manual data management will be quite cumbersome especially due to the large departments and the ever growing number of patients in these institutions. Thus, the only sure way to help hospitals to become reliable and efficient is to advise them to adopt hospital information systems in their patients and data management. The use of information systems will help the hospital to diagnose, manage, and educate relevant stakeholders towards improving their services and practices (Winter and Haux, 2011, Pg. 21). Implementation of information systems in hospitals is inevitable since numerous dominating factors including people, organization, and technology are currently inseparable. Hospitals have currently integrated a series of functions and activities including: Consultation, Disease diagnosis, Providing treatment and treatment facilities, Patients and children immunization, Admission facilities including beds, nursing, and medicine among others. Hospitals also conduct other operational services that include: Recording patients’ information General billing Recording diagnostic information per patient Keeping immunization records per patient or per child Keeping records for various diseases and medicines for curable diseases All these activities and services are often done manually, for hospitals that have not adopted the use of information systems. The activity involved in recording such data is hectic in that each patient’s information is often recorded manually and some of the patient’s personal information includes name, age, and gender (Dudeck, 1997; Pg. 261). These information or data are usually stored afresh whenever the patient visits the hospital. Furthermore, bills that are generated from other units and hospital departments are recorded separately and provided to customer of separate bill sheets. At the end of it all, the same bills will be summed up differently and this will be a waste of time and writing resources. All these data often occupy space; therefore, they are usually destroyed after sometimes to provide space for other day data set. The quantity of data or file piles usually hinders doctors from referring to such files as the need may demand. The volume of the files will obviously discourage the doctors; thus, they will resort to gauze work and such actions may be injurious to the patients involved (Schmitz, 1979; Pg. 92). Therefore, the aim of this project is to eliminate of physical data collection, storage, and reference to improve management of both the patients and hospital management. Part one: Scope The scope of this project is to develop and install software that will automate management in the hospital. Aims The hospital information systems mainly affect the medical informatics that aims mainly in achieving the best sports of patient care and efficient administrative practices that readily acquiring and present data where needed through a networked electronic data processing. In other words, the intended hospital information system in this project is that will facilitate data collection, data storage, faster to reach data, reliable to usage, and secure to store at lower storage costs. Additionally, the intended hospital information system aims at providing common information sources regarding the health history of the patient. Therefore, the intended system or software aims at ensuring the security of the data in that only certain persons under certain circumstances can reach such data. The intended software and the entire hospital information system aim at enhancing the health care professionals’ ability to coordinate care by providing the history of health information about a patient whenever such is required during treatment or consultation of the patient (Project Management Institute, 1999; Pg. 252). Moreover, the system aims at making all the information regarding patient available for all relevant departments and units especially when the required information as been keyed by a relevant department. For instance, the X-ray report keyed in the laboratory should reflect on the patient’s health information on the consultation unit and the medical professional in the consultation room should access such information without asking the patient or the laboratory professional any data. In other words, all the health records of every patient who has ever visited the hospital should be automated in all the hospital departs. However, if the hospital collaborates with other health care providers, such information can be availed to them via internet services. The Purpose of the Project The software will be developed and initiated primarily to automate the hospital management The main users The administrators User The main functions of the software include: Maintaining records from the patient Availing and maintaining test records of the patient Reporting generation and billing Technology to be applied This project aims at employing a desktop application in developing VB 6.0 that has Ms Access with a Backed. Developing the system will follow as below: 1. Designing a database (Ms Access) 2. Forming the Design (VB 6.0) 3. Cording (VB 6.0) 4. Testing (VB 6.0) 5. Reporting Tool (Data Report) Specific Objective The project is primarily a hospital management system that whose objective is to provide effective and efficient patient care management through effective, efficient, and reliable data management. Therefore, the mainly targeted users are the administrators who are doctors and others who are data entry operators. Operational Cost The cost of this project is mainly pegged on the project’s cost benefit analysis Particular Cost Full system investigation $ 10,000 Hardware and software $35,000 Labour $5,000 Operational Duration Activity Time (hours) Full system investigation 35 Hardware and software development (developing the information system) 75 Installation and testing 35 Part Two: The Risk Management Plan – Risk Analysis and Plan The risk management plan may be regarded as a conceptual framework that defines the development of risk management and patient activities and safety programs. Therefore, in this project, the plan will be operationalized though a written formal patient programs and risk management programs. These programs will help the hospital in developing philosophies for patient safety as well as risk management that will be everyone’s responsibility. The major areas of risk management plan will include teamwork and participation of the management, staff, providers, and volunteers. The teamwork and all inclusive participation will the most effective and efficient means of risk management and patient safety program (Haux, 2004; Pg. 35). The implementation of this program will be through proper coordination of multiple functions of the hospital and multiple activities of the departments. The support of the hospital management will be quite vital; thus, it is a factor to be discussed at a series of meeting for deliberating on the project. Implementing evidence based best practices, providing constructive and informative feedbacks as opposed to blame and punishments, as well as learning from errors shall be emphasized during the project implementation. Additionally, the project will be implemented in a just culture where hazards and unsafe conditions will be identified proactively and readily and an all inclusive patient or medical care errors shall be reported and analysed. Moreover, all the identified mistakes will be discussed openly with suggestion considered for systematic improvement undertaken where necessary (Doyle, Austin, and Tucker, 1980; Pg. 79). Nonetheless, individuals shall still be held accountable for their risk management and patient safety practices. For instance, if an investigation and evaluation of an event or error suggests a reckless behaviour and or wilful violation of policies, the responsible individuals shall be subjected to disciplinary actions. Risk management is an important tool in this project since been a platform that will stimulate development, revision, and review of the practices and protocols in the organization in light of identifying risks thereby determining the appropriate means of loss prevention as well as reduction strategies. The significance of this plan is to help in developing vital policies and procedures that shall be used for risk management activities (Esley, 1982; Pg. 67). The significant activities that shall be used in this project include: Claims management Compliant solution Release of information and confidentiality Root cause analysis, event investigation, and follow up Effect analysis and failure mode Staff and provider education, credentialing requirements, and competency validation Managing and reporting of adverse near misses and events Trend analysis of near misses, events, and claims It is apparent that several players are going to form part of the project layout, implementation, and usage. Therefore, the intended risk management plan must include all these players. Nonetheless, the main targets are the hospital and it management and patients. These targeted groups will form the internal and external factors respectively (Project Management Institute, 1999; Pg. 182). Regardless of the identification of the targets of the project, defining and blending of the strategies of these groups is quite profound in developing an all inclusive risk management plan. However, the most significant part in the defining the strategy of the hospital followed by the definition of the total IT strategy. The first step is to analyse the IT risks of the hospital that include existing risks, noting the risk tolerance, and noting the acceptable levels. While defining these strategies, it will be vital to consider that value management risks will help in achieving the hospital’s business goals (Project Management Institute, 1999; Pg. 282). The most appropriate means to undertake this process is through the traditional balanced scorecard approach. In essence, these approaches will incorporation an active involvement the senior management in establishing and discussing the risk factors that might have been impeding the implementation of the entire project. The mission and vision statement of the hospital is vital for the total hospital information system especially with consideration of the hospital as an industry. Therefore, if the hospital information systems cannot help in meeting or supporting the vision and mission statement of the hospital, then it will be pointless commencing it. Additionally, the risk management plan will be in line with customer strategic satisfaction alignment (Jalote, 2004; Pg. 182). The customers in this are the patients and the entire community that the hospital serves. Hence, mitigating risks in line with satisfying the customers’ needs will be through defining their satisfaction performance indicators, values, and risk scales. High levels will indicate value creation while lower levels may indicate actualization of the risk. In either case, necessary measure will be considered for improvement of the project implementation. Strategic finance alignment is another factor to be considered in a risk management plan. The financial risk factor will evaluate based on value and risk scales that include growth, profitability, liquidity, and stability. The growth is to be analysed according to the accuracy of the request of the health insurance society that will mainly relate to billable items within the medical practice (Project Management Institute, 1999; Pg. 282). The risk management plan will also analyse the profitability of the project that will concentrate on the effects of cost reduction activities. It is apparent that the hospital is already requesting a reduction of the budget by 20 per cent. If the project is to implement within the required standards, then this will call for reduction of stability of the project that is often defined as labour cost. However, from the current budget, the entire reduction cannot be pegged on one particular but will be spread across all the particulars. Hence, full system investigation will be reduced by 50 per cent while the hardware and software will be reduced by 14.29 per cent. It should be noted that these reductions will interfere with system sensitivity in certain areas of functionality in that the type of drug may not be part of the information system and will be left for doctor to carry out manually. New Cost Particular Cost (proposed) Cost (Reduced by 20%) Full system investigation $ 10,000 $5,000 Hardware and software $35,000 $30,000 Implementation Labour $5,000 $5,000 Total Cost $50,000 $40,000 In addition, the management further requests for time reduction ten per cent. This will also be related to labour hours. Since the amount for full time system investigation has been reduced, the time used in this sector shall also be reduced. Moreover, the time spend on the software designing shall be reduced accordingly. New Time Allocation Activity Time (hours) (proposed) Time (reduced by 10 %) Full system investigation 35 27.5 Hardware and software development (developing the information system) 75 67 Installation and testing 35 35 Total Hours 155 139.5 IT can mitigate management challenges; however, without proper risk management plan during the installation of information systems in different sectors, departments, and units in the hospital, the IT can itself be the major challenge in the management of the hospital. Thus, Operational risks and IT risks must be managed at all time through designing and implementation of information systems in the hospital just like in other institutions that adopts the use of the same technology. Part Three: Project Management software Project management software often helps in planning, organizing, and managing resource pools as well as developing resource estimates. Depending on the complication of the Project management software, some of the resources that they manage include estimation and planning, cost control and budget management, scheduling, collaboration software, decision making, resource allocation, administration or documentation systems, as well as quality management. The current IT world has numerous project management software that is used in nearly all business types and forms (Stellman and Greene, 2008; Pg. 102). Nonetheless, the more commonly used project management software includes scheduling and project planning project management software. Scheduling project management software is among the most used project management software. The scheduling project management software tools are usually used in sequencing project activities as well as assigning dates and resources to all aligned project activities. The main advantage of the scheduling project management software is that it has varied but considerable features and schedule methods that are user friendly (Futrell, Shafer, and Shafer, 2001; Pg. 139). They commonly know scheduling tools are often supportive since they have multiple dependency between activities, allow effective and efficient resource levelling and assignment, estimates the duration of an activity as well as allowing probability based simulation (Luckey and Phillips, 2006; Pg. 218). The scheduling tools also provide a critical chain and critical path methods and allow cost counting of activities. Another popular project management software Project is the planning software is project management software. It is usually expected to provide stakeholders among other project management players with measurement and justifying tools that provide a levelled effort in completing any project. The main significance of this tool is that it provides an overview of how tasks are to be completed thereby providing early warning to any risks that might be associated with project implementation. In addition, the tool often provides chronological events indication the paths through which the project has progressed particularly the actual rates and planned performances (Morton and Genc, 1999; Pg. 176). Therefore, the planning software is a means of resource optimization; hence, being cost maintenance. It also provides instance information thereby being effective and efficient for collaborators and customers. It should be noted that, despite the immense advantages of the project management software tools, only those who have prior knowledge of their application and applicability can use them effectively and meaningfully. 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(2004). Strategic information management in hospitals: an introduction to hospital information systems. New York [u.a.], Springer. JALOTE, P. (2004). . Beijing, Tsinghua University Press. LUCKEY, T., & PHILLIPS, J. (2006). Software project management for dummies. Hoboken, NJ, Wiley. MORTON, T. E., & GENC, O. (1999). Project management software manual: a POMQuest module. Cincinnati, Oh, South-Western College Publishing. PROJECT MANAGEMENT INSTITUTE. (1999). Project management software survey. Newtown Square, Pa, Project Management Institute. PROKOSCH, H. U., & DUDECK, J. (1995). Hospital information systems: design and development characteristics, impact and future architecture. Amsterdam, Elsevier. SCHMITZ, H. H. (1979). Hospital information systems. Germantown, Md, Aspen Systems Corp. STELLMAN, A., & GREENE, J. (2008). Applied software project management. Sebastopol, CA, O'Reilly. http://public.eblib.com/EBLPublic/PublicView.do?ptiID=443156. VELDE, R. V. D. (1992). Hospital information systems: the next generation. Berlin, Springer-Verlag. WINTER, A., & HAUX, R. (2011). Health information systems: architectures and strategies. London, Springer. Bottom of Form Read More