Strategic Plan Improving Emergency Department

Question: Discuss about the Strategic Plan for Improving Emergency Department. Answer: Introduction: The Newcastle hospital of New York is struggling with poor reimbursement and severe competition from peer hospital within the close proximity of the hospital. Therefore, the strategic plan for improving ED information system includes the following: The failure of Newcastle hospital happened because of the absence of defined strategy or measures to improve the ED service. Therefore, first step will be to develop the IT strategies after identification of factors affecting ED performance. A management committee or board needs to be constituted whose member will set certain objectives and IT policies to improve the workflow of ED. As ED requires speedy medical service to response to medical emergencies, it will be necessary to have specialized ED information system and tools to facilitate automatic tracking. Investment will be required to have IT tools that facilitate speedy communication of patients records through visual tools and electronic health record. This will help in fast processing of patient information as well as tracking the time taken for responding to medical emergency. This will be useful to evaluate the clinicians performance and provide them feedback accordingly (Sittig et al., 2014). Another goal to improve ED service will be to train staffs regarding integrity of data and protecting patients confidential data. Data transfer at the Newcastle hospital was undefined and therefore the strategic plan is to train staffs on the best practice for maintaining integrity of patients health record. The plan for maintaining security and privacy of cloud-based electronic health record are as follows: The selection of electronic documentation tools should be done by IT staffs to ensure that features of EHR helps to preserve the quality of care and improve communication between health staffs. All health staffs should be given accurate guideline to inform them about data management and maintaining integrity of information. It will be their responsibility to take all precautions to maintain confidentiality of data (Rodrigues et al., 2013). Another action plan is to improve the work culture of hospital as many staffs were not committed to improve the quality of care. Strict provision will be provided to assess their performance on a regular basis and provide them a specific clinical standard of performance to enhance accountability in practice (Grol et al., 2013). To ensure that this plan is in alignment with other strategic plan of hospital, it will be necessary to invest in customized software and IT system according to the needs and clinical qualification of users. IT maintenance staff will be recruited who will constantly update the documentation process and maintaining efficiency in work flow. They will also play role in providing intensive training to all staffs to easily use IT tools and software in ED. Among all the factors that have lead to the bankruptcy state of the hospitals, the functionality of the IT system will be the most difficult to overcome. This is because major elements of IT system particularly in order entry, nursing documentation, case management and radiology are missing in the hospital. These are the most basic element required in any ED, however absence of all these is a major drawback. The information system which is present is completely outdated and many staffs are even unaware of its function. Therefore, considering this significant gap in IT functioning, it will be challenging to address this problem as it will require efforts in many areas as well transformation process will be time-consuming. Firstly, the lot of expenditure is required to integrate basic elements of IT system within daily practice. Secondly, the purpose of integration will not be achieved unless all staffs have the knowledge to use functions of IT system effectively. However, providing extensive training will be difficult as many health staffs oppose such system as they feel that it hampers the workflow and their performance. Besides, they are already burdened with clinical responsibilities to treat patients in ED, therefore taking time out for extensive training will be difficult. Inflexibility in the IT system, absence of willingness to change system of work among staffs and lack of experienced IT team can be major barrier in proposing service improvement in the hospital (Nguyen et al., 2014). Addressing this problem will require modification not just in staffs attitude to change but also in hospital infrastructure and overall practice of work flow, therefore this phase of change will be difficult as we ll as time-consuming. Reference Grol, R., Wensing, M., Eccles, M., Davis, D. (Eds.). (2013).Improving patient care: the implementation of change in health care. John Wiley Sons Nguyen, L., Bellucci, E., Nguyen, L. T. (2014). Electronic health records implementation: an evaluation of information system impact and contingency factors.International journal of medical informatics,83(11), 779-796. Rodrigues, J. J., de la Torre, I., Fernndez, G., Lpez-Coronado, M. (2013). Analysis of the security and privacy requirements of cloud-based electronic health records systems.Journal of medical Internet research,15(8), e186. Sittig, D. F., Gonzalez, D., Singh, H. (2014). Contingency planning for electronic health record-based care continuity: a survey of recommended practices.International journal of medical informatics,83(11), 797-804.