1.0 Introduction
1.1 About St. James’s Hospital
St. James’s Hospital (SJH) is the leading provider of acute patient care in Ireland. Accordingly it is a key shaper of public policy within the Irish health system. It occupies a prominent position in the public eye, and places high emphasis on innovation and service excellence.
SJH must constantly compete for resources from the government in order to achieve its goals. One such goal is to become the first hospital in Ireland to implement a full Electronic Paper Record (EPR) and effectively eliminate the use of paper from its operations. This initiative has the potential to transform patient care and significantly improve efficiency and patient safety.
1.2 Rationale for review
If SJH is to leverage the EPR to its full potential it is vital that the management team understands the relationship between technology and competitive advantage. The findings from this literature review should inform management as they attempt to secure funding for this initiative and also guide them regarding potential pitfalls in subsequent implementation.
2.0 Information gathering strategy
ABI/Inform and the Social Sciences Citation Index databases were used to locate journal articles for this review. Both databases were accessed through the UCD library website.
Databases were searched using the following key words/phrases:
• “Technology related competitive advantage”
• “Sustaining competitive advantage”
• “Information technology and competitive advantage”
• “Technology innovation and competitive advantage”
• “IT Governance and competitive advantage”.
Results were refined by journal title to exclude articles from non-business/management/IT disciplines. Articles were also filtere...
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...ue than espoused technology strategy in determining the potential for and extent of competitive advantage due to the EPR;
• The EPR has potential to trigger and increase levels of innovation at SJH. Management should be cognisant of barriers to innovation if this potential is to be realised;
• An IT governance committee should support the director of informatics, senior management and the board in ensuring this costly project remains under control and protected from political opposition and other forces of inertia;
• SJH should take a proactive approach in its relationship with the outsourcing partner for EPR in order to maximise utility through experiential learning; and
• As other hospitals adopt the EPR it may become essential to competition but inconsequential to strategy and accordingly the significance of the risk it creates may increase in importance.
Over the last several years, electronic medical records are becoming more prominent in health care facilities, replacing traditional written records. As many electronics are becoming more prevalent with the invention of numerous smartphones and tablet devices, it seems that making medical records available electronically would be appropriate for the evolving times. Even though they have been in use to some extent for many years, the “Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health section of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has brought paperless documentation into the spotlight” (Eisenberg, 2010, p. 8). The systems of electronic medical records mainly consist of clinical note taking, prescription and medication documentation,
Jha, A. K., Burke, M. F., DesRoches, C., Joshi M. S., Kralovec P. D., Campbell E. G., & Buntin M. B. (2011). Progress Toward Meaningful Use: Hospitals’ Adoption of Electronic Health Records. The American Journal of Managed Care, 17, 117-123
I spent more than half of my 25 years as a nurse using the traditional paper records. Back then, the computer was only utilized by the unit clerk to order unit supplies. All the patient’s record was stored as hard copies in the chart, from the physician’s order and progress notes to all of nursing documentation. For these reasons, I feel I am in a position to offer a valid personal comparison between paper charting and the Electronic Health Record (EHR).
P, Micheal 1998, Competitive advantage: creating and sustaining superior performance: with a new introduction, The Free Press, America.
advantage: The role of human, business, and technology. Strategic management journal, 18, (5), 375-403. doi: doi:10.1002/(SICI)1097-0266(199705)18:5<375::AID-SMJ876>3.3.CO;2-Z
In this paper you will find that the transition from paper health records to electronic medical record is a transition that requires a lot of time and precise preparation and planning. Looking through the paper you will see that there are factors that need to be implemented. You first definitely have to have your medical records. Next you have to know the role that HIPPA will play in your transition because of regulation and violations. Then, you have to prepare for potential problems that you could possibly face. Next, you will see there are several things to evaluate from how long it will take to cost. You will see prices for workstation and the number of staff that you need to carry out your plan of action.
His proposition is that a resource can be considered as a strategic advantage only when a company has a differentiating resource compared to its competitors. With this proposition he confirms the Resource-Advantage theory laid out in 2002 by Hunt and Morgan. The accessibility and cost-effectiveness of IT related functionality resulted in its omnipresence. This entails that a manager must understand it differently, viewing it as a necessity, like capital or people.
This article addresses major aspects such as clinical trial, integrated decision support and guidance, inadequacy of paper record, and data entry. The reason that paper records are not a match for modern medicine is that they are not accessible buy multiple health professionals causing a delay in response to health care, confidentiality and security is a risk granted that anyone could physically change the record and it would become official. The author of this article predicted the basic electronic medical record features that are available today, back in 1999 and the features include integrated clinical workstations with the computational power that can assist with clinical matters, financial and administrative topics, research, and scholarly information. This report indicates that having electronic records can provide efficiency throughout the system of health care for instance the example presented in this article was the process of admission, discharge and transfer of a patient can be changed drastically due to it initially taking hours to going from in and out in minutes. This article will provide the foundation of EMR’s and how time for reform had come more than a decade ago and it’s time for reform once again. With the examples and strategic tactics provided, it is fairly simple to display the evolution of Electronic medical records from
Currently, Kaiser Permanente, a nonprofit organization has already begun to implement the practice of electronic medical records. Kaiser Permanente patients have the privilege of sharing their medical history with each medical provider seen during their Kaiser membership. Depending on the level and type of information needed, every healthcare professional patients have encounters with within their geographical region will have access to notes, prescriptions, procedures, and diagnostic tests at the click of a mouse, to effectively and proficiently render care. All medical documentation provided to Kaiser Permanente from othe...
Terry, K. & Weinstock, M. (2008). Hospital & Health networks: Will PHR’s rule the waves or roll out with the tide? 82, 8; ABI/Inform Global. Retrieved from http://0-proquest.umi.com.aupac.lib.athabascau.ca/pqdweb?did=1545198461&sid=5&Fmt=6&clientId=12302&RQT=309&VName=PQD
Our goal for the research paper was to think of a topic we found interesting. We had some broad topics and everyone voted on which topic they preferred and ultimately we decided to research about Electronic Health Records. After that, we needed to make it more specific so we narrowed it down to the implementation processes and barriers that arise when implementing electronic health records. We started doing some research and looking for peer reviewed articles and journals, yet we found there was still too much information to choose from so we narrowed it down further to focus merely on electronic health record implementation in hospital settings; therefore, which we could throw out any information on clinics, urgent care facilities and other small practices.
Thompson, A.A., Strickland, A.J., & Gamble, J. E. (2010). Crafting and executing strategy: The quest for competitive advantage: Concepts and cases: 2009 custom edition (17th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill-Irwin
A different perspective of approaching competitive advantage is its relationship with different business models, the degree of innovation and the information systems present. A competitive advantage is imminent if the current strategy of a company is value adding and is not in the present moment being implemented by its would-be competitors. The sustainability of a competitive advantage
of a firm to attain new forms of competitive advantage (Müller, 2011). It is due to these
...M. E. (2008). Competitive advantage: Creating and sustaining superior performance. New York: Simon and Schuster.