Stage 4: System Recommendation & Final System Recommendation Report Overview Before you begin work on this assignment, be sure you have read the Case Study, and reviewed the feedback received on your...

Running Head: STAGE 4: System Recommendation & Final System Recommendation Report            1
STAGE 4: System Recommendation & Final System Recommendation Report        28
STAGE 4: System Recommendation & Final System Recommendation Report
Table of Contents
Introduction (Stage 1)    4
I. Organizational Analysis and Requirements (Stage 1)    4
A. Introduction    4
B. Organizational Strategy    4
C. Strategic Use of Technology    4
D. Components of an Information System    4
E. Requirements    4
F. Summary    4
II. Sharing Data (Stage 2)    5
A. Introduction    5
B. Need to Share Data    5
C. Types of Data to be Shared    6
D. Data Interchange Standards    7
E. Summary    9
III. Ethical, Legal and Regulatory Policy Issues (Stage 3)    9
A. Introduction    9
B. Table of Ethical, Legal and Regulatory Policy Issues    10
C. Addressing the Most Difficult Issue    19
D. Summary    20
IV. System Recommendation (Stage 4)    20
A. Introduction    20
B. Proposed IT Solution    20
C. How the Proposed IT Solution Meets the Requirements    20
D. Improvements from Proposed IT Solution    20
E. Implementation Considerations    20
F. Summary    20
Conclusion    20
References    21
Introduction (Stage 1)
Midtown Family Clinic is small-sized practice for internal medicine and is located at an area that has increasing trends in newer family residences. The owner of this practice is Dr. Thompson and he acts as the manager for this medical practice. Two nurses, both registered, for running this practice, aid Dr. Thompson. At present, the practice operation of Dr. Thompson is completely paper-based and the sole software, which is used, is a stand-alone system for appointment scheduling. Billing to the insurance companies is also undertaken in mostly manual way.
The manual and paper-based approach in addition to limitation of staff size is evidently a significant problem to the practice. In addition, Dr. Thompson has various strategic goals, which include the following – to make this medical practice to operate in a more efficient manner as well as to make financial profit, which could be reinvest in the clinic for the purposes of upgrading and expanding it.
Other major plans include the expansion of the clinic to larger capacity with three physicians as well as to rent out space for a physician to offer physical therapy sessions. In this context, this report presents the analysis undertaken, system requirements as well as proposes Electronic Health Records (“EHR”) system for the purposes of improving the processes at Midtown Family Clinic.
I. Organizational Analysis and Requirements (Stage 1)
Organizational Analysis and Requirements
Introduction
    This section presents a detailed organizational analysis as well as identifies the ways, by which the EHR system could aid Midtown Family Clinic in meeting the strategic goals. It also aims to make this medical practice to operate in a more efficient manner as well as to make financial profit, reinvestment of profits for upgrades and expansion, and expansion of the clinic to larger capacity as three physician facility and rent redundant space for outside physician. The section shall also identify data / functional requirements with respect to the EHR system.
Strategic Use of Technology
    At present, Midtown Family Clinic faces various challenges and the Dr. Thompson has various strategic goals in the future. The immediate challenges include the capacity constraints because of bare bones staff, which includes one doctor and two nurses to manage both administrative and medical work and completely paper-based operation making it highly inefficient.
In terms of strategic goals, Dr. Thompson has set following objectives.
[1] To make this medical practice to operate in a more efficient manner,
[2] To make financial profit which could be reinvest in the clinic for the purposes of upgrading and expanding it
[3] Other major plans include the expansion of the clinic to larger capacity with three physicians as well as to rent out space for a physician to offer physical therapy sessions.
The manner in which the proposed EHR system could aid these strategic goals is as follows –
· Strategic Goal #1 is to make this medical practice to operate in a more efficient manner:
EHR system shall aid in making the inputting, storing, retrieving, and overall management of all forms of records in a paper-less manner therein saving time, efforts, and reducing e
ors (Hansen et al., 2019). In this manner, the overall efficiency and productivity of the organization shall vastly improve.
· Strategic Goal #2 make financial profit which could be reinvest in the clinic for the purposes of upgrading and expanding it:
The efficiency improvements and productivity growth enabled by EHR system shall lead to the following outcomes – cost savings and increase in patients catered to and services delivered (Hansen et al., 2019). This shall lead to financial growth and increase in profitability.
· Strategic Goal #3 is to undertake expansion of the clinic to larger capacity with three physicians as well as to rent out space for a physician to offer physical therapy sessions. The use of EHR system shall create an organizational environment, where in the management of processes and handling of increased and wide-ranging patients to become easier without a hassle at an administrative and operational standpoint (Joukes et al., 2019). This shall make the expansion of capacity and additional services to be easier.
Components of an Information System
The various components of the proposed EHR system are presented as follows –
· People
· Person #1: Dr. Thompson, Physician and owner / manager: The roles handled by Dr. Thompson include offering medical service to the patients and to manage / lead the organization
· Person #2: Ms. X, Registered Nurse: The roles handled by Ms. X are to aid Dr. Thompson in offering medical service and to undertake administrative / scheduling tasks.
· Person #3: Ms. Y, Registered Nurse: The roles handled by Ms. Y are to aid Dr. Thompson in offering medical service and to undertake administrative / scheduling tasks.
· Organizational Processes
· Process #1 is patient data storing and retrieving: At present these data / information / records are stored manually in a paper formats in the front office. The storage and retrieval is done in a manual manner. The use of EHR shall digitize, automate, and ease the process by making these data / information / records available in a single computer.
· Process #2 is scheduling and managing appointments with patients: At present, the facility uses a standalone system with no interconnectivity and advanced features to manage patient appointments. The EHR system shall offer more advanced and integrated module to effectively and efficiently undertake this process
· Process #3 is the process of billing to insurance companies: This process is at present undertaken in a quasi-manual manner with paper-based and individual follow-ups. The process inefficient and time consuming. The use of EHR system shall automate, digitize, and make it more efficient to undertake this process
· Data
· Patient Name
· Patient Unique ID
· Patient Date of Birth
· Patient Illness History
· Patient Medication History
· Patient Diagnosis History
· Patient Insurance Numbe
· Prescription Records
· Scan / MRT Records
· Billing Information
Functional Requirements
The functional requirements are listed as follows
1) Manage the problem, medications, allergy, and adverse reactions list
2) Manage results of diagnostic study, clinical notes and other documentation
3) Manage the patient demographic data
4) Recording of health data, patient-created data and external clinical documentation
5) Administering patient-specific care plan and instructions
6) Write prescriptions specific to patient dosing, order refe
als and warnings
7) Support from both context-enabled and standard assessments
8) Scheduling and managing of tasks
9) Electronic communications as well as data recorded using medical devices
10) Transfe
ing of data as well as the cu
ent directory concerning provider information
Summary
In summary, this section presented a detailed organizational analysis as well as identified the ways by which the proposed EHR system can aid Midtown Family Clinic in meeting the strategic goals. The people, data and the functional requirement components of the proposed EHR system were identified and presented.
II. Sharing Data (Stage 2)
A. Introduction
This section presents a detailed organizational analysis of the different types of data that flows in and out of Dr. Thompson’s Midtown Family Clinic specifying the need for proper EHR system that can help Dr. Thompson’s clinic to provide better facilities to the patients. The idea is to make his medical practice to more profitable by making it more efficient manner so that the profit can be reinvestment for upgrades and expansion. The section shall also identify data and the functional requirements with respect to the EHR system in the Midtown Family clinic; and to improve of the exchange standards if necessary.
B. Need to Share Data
The Midtown Family Clinic faces various challenges when catering to the needs of the patients. With the limited number of nurses to attend to the reception and tend to the needs of both the doctor and the patients, the entire process has become quite time consuming and laborious. Patients often complain that the waiting time is too long while the nurses are overwhelmed with the various needs of the clinic. Apart from the patients’ records, the clinic needs to verify regularly the credentials of the patients to check their insurance. In the absence of a proper billing system, the Clinic has become inefficient in its operations. The pathological reports generated from the labs are also filed manually making the entire process very laborious. While Dr. Thompson is absent the clinic, the nurses face many difficulties in locating appropriate medical records of the patients. The paper-based system has made the due process of storing medical history very problematic of the Nurses.
In terms of communications with the external organizations, Dr. Thompson and his Midtown Family clinic face a challenge. The two of the major external organization that the Clinic needs to contact on a regular basis are – [1] The Insurance and the billing Company that checks the credentials of the patients and verifies their claim for insurance, [2] The pathological laboratories that generate the test results of the various clinical tests that Dr. Thompson has prescribed to his patients.
The purpose of communication between the external organizations mentioned above and the Midtown Family Clinic are as follows –
[1] The Insurance Billing Company:
· The Billing system needs proper inputting or retrieval of all forms of records in paper-fewer manners stating the different expenses that the patient has.
· The third party medical billing company verifies the claim with the insurance companies of the patients and enters the registered information of the patients to their own website providing a login key to the Clinic.
· The Nurse at the front desk of the Midtown Family Clinic checks the information using Internet Explorer in the absence of the company software making the entire process very time consuming and laborious.
· Having a software based billing system would make the entire process faster and easie
[2] The Laboratories:
· The laboratory test results that are files in a paper based manner and becomes problematic for Dr. Thompson while refe
ing a patient to a specialist.
· The medical records are difficult to find at the time of re-entry.
C. Types of Data to be Shared
· The process of billing to insurance companies undertaken at present is in a quasi-manual manner with paper-based and individual follow-ups. The process is inefficient and time consuming. The reports of the laboratories are also stored manually. The use of EHR...