In the past one month, I decided to do a self-assessment in my field of study. I felt so curious that I was missing some taught about the emerging technologies in the health sector and how the health care leaders implement them. As such, I wanted to broaden my perspective of understanding in the aspect that I was not properly familiar. I interviewed Laura, a senior nursing director in one of the nursing homes in California. Laura has been a working nurse for the past twenty years until last year she was promoted to be the senior director of the nursing home. Apart from that, she has a doctorate in strategic planning. The skills and experience acquired have molded Laura to better her leadership skills.
According to Laura, the implementation of health care technology and linking of the health care systems of a shared database was a terrible experience but finally she achieved the goal. The exercise is costly, but the outcome is incredible. Laura noted that role of technology in the healthcare industry cannot be overstated; as a result, most, health practitioners are utilizing the health information technology to enhance better surgical procedures, proper diagnosis, and optimizing patient care. It is the role of a health care leader to ensure the nurses and other health practitioners have access to better office equipment in their workplace. Further, a leader should never lack the qualities of integrity, innovation, and creativity. In this paper, am going to discuss the view of the leader on which health informatics he has implemented and to what extent the health information technology boosted service delivery.
The only way nursing home healthcare agencies can comply with the Accountable Care Organizations rules is by providing and maintaining better services to patients. Laura says as a leader, serving in one of the agencies, her responsibility is to come up with new strategies to meet and counter the challenges. Precisely, the only sure way of countering the challenge of changing the way things are done by using new technology and maybe restructuring and reengineering the health care process systems
Health information technology has a great contribution to the health industry (Christensen et al. 2009). To be more precise Laura` nursing home embraced various technologies in all aspect of her organization. First, the organization has implemented the electronic medical records system. There is access to bulky information with a limited span of time. All records are kept in a database, and the doctor is only required to key in a query and checks the results instantly (Fanjiang et al. 2005). More often than not, paperwork has significantly been reduced. Information that can be accessed includes patient`s past health history record and drug information. The benefits of this system have transformed the health care process within the Home care agency.
Medical technology has also changed the phase of Laura`s nursing home agency regarding using modern equipment. The integration of these systems has enabled the clinic to have better monitoring systems and optimized scanning equipment. The definite results for implementing these systems include reduced recovery time, early detection of infectious diseases among patients, and better management of chronic illnesses. Ultimately, the improvement of the quality of life is the immediate feedback that has been realized by implementing the medical technology.
Besides, Laura`s Health Agency has embraced telehealth services. It is a system that links the physicians with the patients. For instance, the patients can hold a video conference with the doctor at a designated time you book an appointment with your doctor. The technology is cutting down the cost of traveling and as well saving time. The patients can get doctor`s prescription from this technology and other relevant information instantly.
Also, using mobile technology has been implemented by the organization. The management has given each health practitioner a tablet. Implementing mobile technology is a significant step towards helping the doctors and nurses to access information instantly especially when carrying out research about critical prescriptions. Notably, administrative efficiencies and effectiveness have been achieved in the healthcare process.
Despite the implementation of the above technologies, still Laura wants to implement a decision support system. DSS is a computerized application that collects, analyzes, and integrates data to enhance better decision making by the management team (Christensen et al. 2009). The software will gather information from various data sets, departmental health records since it is a kind of relational database. The essence of this application is to enable the Home agency to have a common pool of information to improve decision making. In this case, all the authorized personnel from the top management to the low-level management view the same information. The decision structure and decision making will be much easier because every member of the governing council has a glimpse of the current problems facing the Healthcare agency. The process decision support system will boost short term and long term decision making.
As a matter of fact, Laura was advocating for a health information system, but the greatest mistake she made was underestimating the cost of implementing this project and did not organize proper training to the health practitioners on how the various systems shall work. Laura noted that the proposal to implement new technology systems within the organization was solely her idea. So she was compelled to make critical decisions to make this project a success. Besides, the health practitioners did not undergo formal training on how to use the new systems but instead inadequate system experts were employed to help the doctors in areas where they did not understand how the system works.
References
Fanjiang, G., Grossman, J. H., Compton, W. D., & Reid, P. P. (Eds.). (2005). Building a Better Delivery System: A New Engineering/Health Care Partnership. National Academies Press.
Christensen, C. M., Grossman, J. H., & Hwang, J. (2009). The innovator’s prescription. A
disruptive solution for health care. New York: McGraw-Hill.
