Introduction
A small temporary employment firm has decided to expand its operation within the home health care industry. The segment targeted will be the ageing population to provide services around the clock. These services will include nursing supervision and certified home care conducted by registered nurses, licenses practical nurses, nursing assistant and non-nursing home care specialists under the provincial health care regulations. Each client will be assigned via a case registered through a referral by hospitals, doctors, private contracts or other health care providers. The company’s cost center will be in line with the provincial health care, insurance companies and private billing.
A future goal of the company over a five to seven year plan is to expand across western Canada, followed by Ontario, Maritimes, Quebec and the territories. The company expects to align itself with existing regional private employment service and relevant health care organizations for each region.
This report will recommend a strategy, developing overall objectives, identifying the various projects and set priorities in order to accomplish the company’s goals.
Systems Objectives
In order to achieve these goals, an information systems infrastructure needs to be established that is able to integrate with external systems of other participating organizations. A central database is required for sharing patient records, including billing information, under a strict security framework. This database needs to incorporate an inventory of all staff members. The data model should be flexible to help meet the requirements of each provincial health regulation body which may vary for each location. Other factors that are required include speed a...
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...nce and security into account.
At this stage, all operation segments must be tested and analyzed for further improvements before expanding to other regions. Otherwise, with an incorrect initial model, it will be difficult to resolve issues later and may hinder the systems efficiency.
Once the primary data center is evaluated over a period of time for performance and efficiency, then the company should expand its data center to include remote locations within the network topology.
Conclusion
Based on recommendations that have been provided, the company can expect to see a secure infrastructure that supports efficiency and productivity. The information system principles defined will allow both the company and its supporting infrastructure to grow at the same rate. This expandable network system will give the company a competitive advantage over the industry.
One of the demands in healthcare today is to have the ability to allow healthcare organizations to exchange patient health related information with other healthcare organizations. This was made possible by the creation of the electronic health record (EHR), electronic medical record (EMR) and personal health record (PHR). The EHR, PHR and the EMR allowed for patient’s paper medical charts into transformed into electronic charts. This allowed for a better way to organize the information that was contained the paper medical chart. The health organization began to realize they could use these electronic charts for a better way to care and share patient health related information. However, as the transmission of data continued, the need for standards developed to insure the interoperability of these healthcare systems. Two of the standards that were created in order to help with the electronic transmission of medical data are the Continuity of Care Record (CCR) and the Continuity of Care Document (CCD).
There are a variety of health settings that provide patient health services. With the use of health services there has to be some type of health information exchange or system that will enable users to exchange data. Today there are networks that do this. Some of these networks are Community health information network (CHIN), Regional health information network (RHINO), National Health Information Network (NHIN) and Health Information technology for economic and clinical health act (HITECH Act). The purpose of this paper is to identify these networks, discuss the relationship among each other and lastly, explain their relationship to formation of a patient-centered management system and electronic health records (EHRs).
A nursing home is another form of care and this involves an elderly person moving from their home to a building full of all amentities necessary for living well. The only downside to nursing homes is that they are the most exepnsive alternative and that there is a large waiting list for getting into one. In 2010, the Ontario Health Quality council reported, “wait times for a long-term care bed in Ontario have tripled since 2005” (Born, 2011). A nursing home has become a last resort because of these reasons and we need to do everything in our power to alleviate the amount of demand for these nursing homes.
Enterprise Patient Administration System (EPAS) is a state-of-the-art and combined electronic patient record system that will produce a consistent and complete electronic health record in the long run for patients across all South Australia Health (SA Health) sites. EPAS is a pre-built and pre-configured by 60% by a global healthcare systems company, Allscript. The system was greatly customised by 40% by SA Health to support SA Health’s clinical and administrative implementation. Also, the system becomes a dynamic environment that responds to user’s needs and changing business practice.
When a member of someone’s family goes ill or is no longer able to live on their own and take care of themselves; it is up to the family members to decide the best course of action for them to get the best care that they can. There several different options that need to be considered when looking at long-term care facilities for older adults. In this paper, I will briefly discuss two of the most common options that people choose between when looking at long-term care options. One option is home care and the other is assisted and/or independent living facilities. These two options are some of the best ways to take care of ill elders.
...nce an incident that may not be seen as such by staff working in the same environment but, if the staffs have frequently witness that the same incident occur; they may stop reporting the incident. However, database application system can save charting time which could be utilized to provide care to residents. Administration function like medical records, risk assessments, daily reports and coding requires documentations from the service users` electronic medical record database to enhance the EHR, which link the EHR data with databases containing standardized assessment information from external healthcare systems. If the database is not similar as to what other healthcare systems use, it is impossible to share information from EHR database with other clinical application systems.
“An electronic health record (EHR) is a digital version of a patient’s paper chart. EHRs are real-time, patient-centered records that make information available instantly and securely to authorized users.” (healthit.gov) The EHR mandate was created “to share information with other health care providers and organizations – such as laboratories, specialists, medical imaging facilities, pharmacies, emergency facilities, and school and workplace clinics – so they contain information from all clinicians involved in a patient’s care.” ("Providers & Professionals | HealthIT.gov", n.d., p. 1) The process has proved to be quite challenging for providers. As an incentive, the government began issuing payments to those providers who “meaningfully use certified electronic health record (EHR) technology.” (hhs.gov) There are three stages that providers must progress through in order to receive theses financial incentives. Stage one is the initial stage and is met with the creation and implementation of the HER in the business. Stage two “increases health information exchange between providers.” ("United States Department of Health and Human Services | HHS.gov", n.d., p. 1) Stage three will be the continuation and expansion of the “meaningful use objectives.” ("United States Department of Health and Human Services | HHS.gov", n.d., p. 1) The hospital, where I work, initiated the HER mandate many years ago. In this paper, I will discuss the progression and the challenges that my hospital encountered while implementing the EHR mandate.
There are changes in the demographic as the population grows older, the number of older adult’s increases and thus, there is an increase of proportion of patients that are older adults for nurses to take care of (Wells, Y., Foreman, P., Gething, L., & Petralia, W., 2004). The nurses are there to assist and support the older adults in achieving wellness within their situation through empowering the clients (Touhy, et al (2012). Caring for older adults is important as there is an increase in population with deteriorating health. When caring for a client it is important to incorporate Jean Watson’s caring theories and Carative Factors to help influence and support the care. She encourages nurses to co-participate within the caring process by establishing unity and trust between the nurse and client. First, this paper will explain a situation in where I cared for an older adult and it will then introduce Jean Watson’s lower order needs, specifically the need for activity and how it relates to the older adult I cared for. Lastly, this paper will explain the nursing interventions I implemented to meet the lower order need, with a discussion of Carative Factor #4 relating to the client.
Understanding an organization, how and why they do business, and how they are different requires a deep look into all of their parts and pieces. Discussed here will be a review of Advanced Home Care, their mission and vision, their organizational structure, leadership, and how they differentiate themselves from the competitors.
The adoption of the electronic health record (EHR) is a clever program and promising to the health care delivery system, which is beneficial to health care providers, hospitals, and consumers/patients. Subsequently, the federal government offers an EHR incentive program or popularly known as meaningful use in health care to accelerate the implementation. One of the major components of the meaningful use standards is interoperability of the system wherein exchanges and use of information can be utilized to improve the quality of care. Additionally, EHR increases the efficiency of reporting, speeds up the report retrieval to prevent order redundancy, and improves decision making through immediate results and information availability. On the other hand, patient still questions one aspect of the EHR and health modernization regarding personal information privacy and security. Consequentially, a vast number of patients fear of sharing their important information due to the unmanageable risks regarding privacy and security breaches.
An electronic health information exchange is the sharing of health related information between patients, providers, nursing staff, pharmacists and other health care organizations. The main objective of an electronic health information exchange (HIE) is for patients’ personal health information to be available, accessible, and sharable at any time and to follow them from physician to physician, increasing interoperability while decreasing cost and time. There are many benefits to an organization implementing a health information exchange; an HIE can decrease unnecessary services and reduce costs by making administrative duties more efficient. It also allows patients to get more involved with their own health care and encourages a better quality of care. The health information exchange improves the quality of care in healthcare organizations. One area of concern when being a part of the health information exchange is technical issues that could occur in the system. Getting patient information to successfully transfer from provider to provider, state agencies included, is a challenge that health information organizations can face. “Although these organizations have proven the ability to receive information, they have realized that a lack of consensus in terms of standards prevents them from pushing data effectively and economically.”(Milstine, 2011 p.761) This issue has the potential to be a problem for health information managers because HIM professionals must follow all laws and standards for protecting patient personal health information.
As the population of the United States ages and lifespan increases, the U.S. is being faced with challenges that could either hurt the country or benefit it if plans are executed correctly. By the year 2050, more than thirty-two million Americans will be over the age eighty and the share of the 80-plus generation will have doubled to 7.4 percent. Health care and aging population has become a great deal considering the impact it is having on the U.S. The United States is heading into another century with an outstanding percentage of people within the aging population. Today’s challenges involving health care and the aging populations are the employees of health professions being a major percentage of the aging population, the drive into debt, and prevention and postponement of disease and disability.
As one ages, the body accumulates a myriad of multidimensional changes in the realms of physical, biological, psychological, and social alterations. These changes can manifest from a deficiency in one area or an abundance in another. According to the student nurse, these changes can be functional, potentially dysfunctional, or dysfunctional based on Gordon’s Functional Health Patterns. The student nurse conducts a similar interview and assessment process with each patient to gather subjective and objective data related to the health and wellness of the individual. The function of the student nurse’s interview process using Gordon’s Functional Health Patterns reflects the purpose of the interviewing an elderly individual in the community. The purpose of this paper is to emulate the nursing process by ranking the priority of care for the identified health problems using Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
As adults the transition into old age can be difficult for some people. Frustration, lack of responsibility and dependence can make the process of aging undesirable. Old age should be viewed as another phase of life, but not the end of life. In order to help elderly cope with aging it is important for them to have social interaction. Support from family, friends and the local community can make a difference in the psychological well being of older adults.
Health information management involves the practice of maintaining and taking care of health records in hospitals, health insurance companies and other health institutions, by the use of electronic means (McWay 176). Storage of medical information is carried out by health information management and HIT professionals using information systems that suit the needs of these institutions. This paper answers four major questions concerning health information systems.