Knowledge Management in the Healthcare System
The healthcare system is an industry that is mostly depended on knowledge management systems to give it a competitive edge over their counterparts. In today's information sharing age, knowledge management (KM) is becoming increasingly important as people move towards doing more collaborative projects in the workplace unlike fifty years ago where manufacturing was the primary type of work being done. (Dalkir, 2005). In the healthcare system just like any other, its sustainable advantage is its ability to gather, share and utilize the knowledge to improve their performance. The healthcare system entails a community of practice who are defined as "a group of people who share a common concern, a set of problems, or interest in a topic and who come together to fulfill both individual and group goals." (Cambridge, Kaplan, and Suter, 2005).
In any healthcare organization which is concerned with health care delivery, whether in research centers, hospitals or insurance companies, knowledge management is crucial. Inadequacies in delayed knowledge sharing have often led to the loss of lives and discontinued care in the hospital. Unlike other organizations in the service industry, the hospital has varied services that must be accomplished, from tending to emergency cases to the administration of hospital funds. Sharing of the correct information promptly is of the essence because the hospital is concerned with preserving and improving the quality of life. Any ambiguities in the information sharing chain could cause avoidable consequences like the loss of a patient's life. Another aspect of the delivery is that the industry has shifted from physician-patient relationship to become more customer-company. A patient also no longer has just a single physician rather he/she has a team of specialist who work in collaboration. (Bordoloi and Islam).
Currently, there is extensive information in the literature about KM, but it is only recently that interested parties have taken an interest in establishing efficient frameworks of knowledge sharing in the healthcare industry. It is so because existing literature has not adequately defined knowledge management but has segmented it into several constructs and built up on it. Such knowledge is gained from previous experiences and professionals in the healthcare system should be encouraged to share their past experiences in treating patients especially whose timely treatment was crucial. Knowledge management in this industry involves sharing and storing the information or future reference. As Dalkir (2005) emphasizes, the employees hold the greatest assets to knowledge sharing in any organization.
While it is important to store the knowledge, one also has to be aware that some information is time-bound and risks becoming expired and outdated. Information sharing leads to acquiring new knowledge as the healthcare professionals come up with ways to use it, for example, to form a new diagnosis of a patient. Just like in the intranet systems present in an office setting for sharing knowledge, the information has to be disseminated during the period it is most required and useful. The intranet systems provide an easy way to access the information, but it is also filled with junk information if people are not taught about how to use it effectively. Sometimes, it is impossible to validate information shared in the system, and one has to comb through it to find meaningful information. (Lesser and Everest, 2001). However, in the healthcare industry, knowledge sharing is quite problematic because their oaths bind most professionals patients may also object to having their information given out. To improve these mindsets, the industry is coming up with frameworks that knowledge is only shared when necessary and that the people involved are legally bound to a contract.
Another important aspect of the prompt delivery of knowledge sharing lies in involving the senior-level professionals in the healthcare system. These individuals have had first-hand experiences and made mistakes and subsequently, learned from them. They should be involved in training the junior-level professionals on how to avoid the same mistakes, and also, record them in their Web systems in a way that they can be accessed and reused. Such knowledge helps the professionals to improve the way they perform their tasks whether in administering treatment or in their research.
Effective knowledge management can be measured in this industry based on how it affects the patient-care benefits and the organizational level whereby there is little discord between the upper-level administrators and the actual healthcare professionals. KM is built upon two concepts, the KM infrastructure which includes state-of-the-art technology and structure and, KM process. KM process involves the ways of acquiring the information, converting it to knowledge, applying it in the right context and its storage, verification and protection. (Bordoloi and Islam).
More and more research is being carried out in the field of healthcare and is generating vast amounts of data for one professional to store and analyze. To ensure that most, if not all of such information are acquired and shared in the right way, it must be broken down into fragments. Healthcare has several varying professions that range from accountants to the nurses and therefore, the information the accountant receives may not be directly useful to the nurse looking after the patient. It is best described by Paul (as cited in Bordoli and Islam) where he says, “differing professional groups having differing rules, job representations, behaviors and value coverage.” However, they all work together to achieve the same goal of providing quality healthcare to their patients. They, however, all establish the community of practice that the healthcare organization is responsible for sponsoring. These communities of practice must be sustained over time, and each professional under this community has the particular goal they wish to achieve. The communities of practice usually have a common goal, but it should also not be at the expense of their personal goals. (Cambridge et al., 2005).
If each department knows it purpose, it is charged with fulfilling it by developing mutual understanding and respect to ensure the free flow of information. The information each department receives will achieve the same community of practice goal but will be tailored for example, for the accounting department. Thus, information meant for accounting should be shared amongst other employees in the department and information geared towards providing new health services and procedures should be shared among the medical specialists. The differing information is only shared with the two different professions if they overlap. It ensures that the employees are not burdened by information overload of little benefit to them.
The organization should, therefore, invest resources in both the human resource and the technological infrastructure levels to ensure efficient and sustainable knowledge sharing practices. On the HR level, healthcare should be involved in programs for their employees that guide them on how to build their purpose and align their individual goals with those of the organizations. They also foster proper ways of disseminating the knowledge by organizing them into groups. On infrastructure, the organization must set up network channels such as the computer semantics programs that can fetch and connect vast amounts of data from medical websites created by professionals. They provide information on how to diagnose and manage diseases. Moreover, current healthcare systems should work to implement successful electronic records of patients and their history to avoid a repetition of misdiagnosis or wrongful deaths.
References
Bordoloi, P., and Islam, N. (n.d.). Knowledge Management Practices and Healthcare Delivery: A Contingency Framework. The Electronic Journal of Knowledge Management Vol. 10 Issue 2 (pp110-120). Retrieved from www.ejkm.com
Cambridge, D., Kaplan, S., and Suter, V. (2005). Community of Practice Design Guide: A Step-by-step Guide for Designing and Cultivating Communities of Practice in Higher Education.
Haughom, J. (2014). Knowledge Management in Healthcare: It’s More Important Than You Realize. Retrieved from https://www.healthcatalyst.com/enable-knowledge-management-in-healthcare
Lesser, E., and Everest, K. (2001). Using Communities of Practice to Manage Intellectual Capital. Ivey Business Journal.
Sharratt, M., and Usoro, A. (2003). Understanding Knowledge-Sharing in Online Communities of Practice. Electronic Journal on Knowledge Management, Vol. 1 Issue 2 (pp 187-196).
