Question

Pls, provide your answers in a well-developed paragraph and should be related to healthcare. Two pages or close between 300 to 400 words should be fine. Thanks

Analyze how the major techniques used for evaluation of a HIT investment differ??

Answer 1

Increasing need of integration of technology in healthcare industry: The objective of any technological integration in healthcare is to have improved patient care, enhanced and effective diagnosis outcome, increased diagnosis efficiency and cost effectiveness as well as increased overall satisfaction of patient.

In general, the healthcare’s readiness to change to integrate Health Information Technology Implementation is usually exhibited by the following:

• The healthcare has communicated the purpose behind the change to all employees
• All employees of the healthcare are aligned to the change
• The infrastructural requirements for the change are met
• The business model of the healthcare has been modified to integrate the change

Effective maintenance of EHR would facilitate the future of healthcare in the overall world. The objective of any EHR (electronic health records) project is to have improved patient care, enhanced and effective diagnosis outcome, increased diagnosis efficiency and cost effectiveness as well as increased overall satisfaction of patient.

The primary stakeholders in electronic health records (EHR) implementation will be:

• Physicians and Nursing staff: They will be accessing the health records of patients for diagnosis and treatment. They want a user friendly and easily accessible EHR system
• Financial stakeholders of the hospitals: They will be funding the EHR implementation project. The costs of the EHR system must be within bounds
• Patients: The data of the patients will be maintained in the EHR system. The patients must have trust in the system for confidentiality and restricted access, so that patient’s privacy rights are maintained.
• Billing and Auditing team of hospital: The billing system supported by EHR must be easy to implement and must maintain accuracy in the billing process.

Types of software which can be integrated in a healthcare to integrate HIT in the system:

• Patient record management system: Here the detail of all patients, their contact address, medical history, test results are maintained
• Electronic health record: Patient record management system is used to maintain electronic health record in any hospital. The objective of any EHR (electronic health records) project is to have improved patient care, enhanced and effective diagnosis outcome, increased diagnosis efficiency and cost effectiveness as well as increased overall satisfaction of patient.

• Medical Practice Management: This software serves as the centralized health management system for the healthcare
• E-prescribing software: The prescriptions of patients can be directly sent by the physicians to the pharmacy using this software
• Hospital management software: This software maintains details about the core and non-core functionality of the healthcare

The security measures to facilitate data integrity and adoption of HIT in healthcare, are as follows:

• Data encryption: With the advent of technology, any data available on the internet can be accessed by anyone and from anywhere. The probability of malicious attacks on such data is quite high. To protect the data from unauthorized access, the data can be encrypted with the help of algorithms and the access to such data can be restricted.
• Access Management Systems: The data of hospitals and patients can be protected by the integration of access management systems. These systems restrict the access to system data by approving access after biometric or password validation. Any unauthorized access can be kept in check quite easily.
• Maintenance of audit trails: The audit trails can prove to be quite significant in the era of EHRs. Audit trails can be used to keep a check on the EHR implementation and detect any kind of deviations in the nascent state itself. Law and compliance adherence can be effectively ensured with the help of audit trails.

The major techniques which can be used for evaluation of an HIT investment in healthcare are as follows:

• Cost benefit analysis: This investment technique evaluates the proposal by evaluating the costs and predicting the benefits which will get generated by its implementation.
• Pay-Back period method: This technique evaluates the number of years in which the proposal would be able to generate the expenditure associated with it, as profits.
• Average rate of return method: This method is also known as accounting rate of return method. The HIT proposal is evaluated to identify the investments and the associated earnings for a particular period. A percentage of the same is used to analyse the average rate of return for the proposal.

The healthcare must evaluate the features of the HIT program offered by different bidding companies, as per their requirement. Then they can use any of the above mentioned methods to analyse the feasibility and profitability of the investment proposal. The best HIT program must be selected for integration.