each question half page , one references
q1
Not too long-ago HCOs used paper charting instead of EMRs. All of the patients’ information during their stay was kept in their paper chart. If the patient required an extended stay at the hospital and their binder became full, a new binder would be started. Patients could have several paper chart binders during one hospital stay. At times clinical notes and doctors’ orders were hard to read or find in the paper chart. The charts would often go missing or someone else would be using it. This made checking orders or adding clinical notes very inconvenient. Paper charts would begin to fall apart and often pages would go missing from the chart, making the patients chart incomplete, possibly missing vital information about the patient’s medical care.
Today, there are electronic medical records that contains the patients’ medical history, patients current medicine list, clinical note, vitals, order, and tests results. There is so much data generated healthcare information that healthcare analytics is used for QI and to help healthcare leaders make decisions for their organizations. Today, healthcare information technology (HIT) can help organizations gain deeper insight into their performance than previous technologies, or lack of technology allowed (Strome, 2013). There are a few key components that are important for healthcare analytics to possess. They are accurate, timely, relevant, direct, analyzed, and visualized information (Strome, 2013). HCOs require better insight into their operations in order to continuously improve patient care. Transparency across departments, and accountability are possible with HIT. As a manager or administrator, I would use key components of an analytics healthcare system to make evidence-based decisions to improve QI. Key components I would be concerned with would be information that could lower infection rates, patient falls, medication errors, and patient deaths that could be prevented.
Q2
Progressive healthcare requires transformation because healthcare relies on organizations to maintain efficient procedures that are up to date, sustainable and technology-based. With technology ever-changing and updating on a regular basis, it mandates that organizations transform according to technology. The challenge with continued transformation is to equally advance clinical device technology and information technology in order to promote improvement in quality, performance, safety, and efficiency (Strome, p. 2, 2013). While having devices that track, record and account for information that never used to be accessible, it also requires data analysis and that’s where advancement in technology is always needed. By having systems in place that allow for healthcare organizations to effectively collect and analyze data there are many opportunities for growth. Transformation and adoption of new technology allow organizations to improve and focus on efforts to identify opportunities to become more safe and efficient.
The current state of healthcare costs and quality includes some staggering revelations backed by data from 2013 that estimate between 44,000 and 98,000 patients die every year in hospitals because of medical errors that could have been prevented and that that the cost to society of these preventable errors ranges between $17 billion and $29 billion in both direct and indirect financial costs (Strome, p. 3, 2013). While these numbers are astronomical and organizations should continually work on lowering them, these statistics as a percentage are likely lower than what they used to be thanks to efforts in improving quality and patient safety and adapting to changes in legislation and new technology.
Healthcare organizations have endless opportunities in healthcare analytics. A useful analytic utilized in the current medical office I work in is PDMP reports. These reports let prescribing doctors see how many mg of certain drugs a patient is taking or has prescribed. It formulates information from pharmacies to give a dosage so that pain medication can be ethically prescribed. Another useful analytic tool is the BMI calculator that automatically calculates patients’ BMI from height and weight and compares it to past appointments. This tool allows surgeons in my office to determine if a patient is a candidate for inpatient or outpatient surgeries.
A quality improvement project I would envision would be cutting down the number of times patients have to wait in urgent care or the emergency department of a hospital. Oftentimes, patients are left waiting in the waiting room to fill out paperwork and wait for a bed to open up. To streamline the process I would allow for a pre-check-in via the hospital or urgent care’s website that allows you to fill in the basic information. From there it would go into a system where employees at the organization would then determine the level of severity and admit patients accordingly by notifying them when there is a bed available. Analytics on the patient would drive the decision-making by hospital staff required to admit. By having technology that can organize patient information and collect the necessary details, patients may receive better quality care. To ensure that it doesn’t fail, routine updates and check-ins with users are important to the success of the system. Additionally, there would be the “old-fashion” way of checking in, but this would provide another option that better prepares the department for the patient.
