Healthcare IT Strategy
The IT strategy benefits the patient as it means that all the information clinicians need to deliver the best possible care, with an optimal outcome is easily available whenever and wherever it is needed. This helps clinicians by reducing the time they spend trying to locate information. It will allow them to increase the time they have available for direct patient care. The end-goal of the IT strategy is to achieve a ‘single view of the patient’. The single view of the patient means that every clinician involved in the patients care (doctors, nurses, pharmacists, etc.) have a full understanding of the patients complete care needs and medical history.
The healthcare IT strategic framework is summarized in this diagram
To build a more sustainable future for healthcare services, the goal of IT strategy is to ensure that the technology needed to run an effective and high quality healthcare systems are in place in order to mitigate the following challenges:
- To meet increased demand for services from an ageing population.
- Staff shortages in critical areas such as nursing, requiring the introduction of more innovative approaches to delivering healthcare, attracting, and retaining staff.
- Improving health status in the face of rising rates of chronic diseases including heart diseases, pulmonary diseases, diabetes, cancer, and risk factors such as obesity and inactive lifestyles.
- Consumers are becoming more informed, have higher expectations and suffer more complex problems.
- Quality and safety standards are challenged as demands increase.
- Financial sustainability and cost pressures are expected to continue to rise
To meet and prepare for the challenges facing the delivery of healthcare services, implementation of IT solutions to support staff and embed business processes is becoming very critical for sustaining the delivery of services. To be successful, it requires a change in the way that IT solutions are procured, designed and implemented.
Historic investment decisions that led to the development of disparate clinical systems, applications, mixed infrastructure and integration approaches resulted in:
- Very high integration cost and difficulty gaining a comprehensive view of clinical data or the management of information
- Duplication of effort and little reuse of technology assets
- Information gaps and overlaps
- Different clinical specialty systems making it difficult to effectively manage the patient journey and does not give clinicians a single view of their patients
- Limited and costly support of old systems.
AS a Result
From clinicians perspective, it is difficult to share patient information and coordinate patient care.
From a management perspective, it is difficult to obtain accurate information on the organization performance.
From a financial perspective, the systems are expensive to maintain.
Here is where IT strategy and program must be realigned and focused to meet long-term needs by connecting isolated islands of information and technology, rapidly supporting clinical services, and the organization’s supporting systems and processes.
The following Four (4) major components where an IT strategy has to be developed in order to build a more sustainable future for the delivery of healthcare services; and these are:
- Clinical Systems Strategy (i.e., EMR, PACS/RIS, LIS, eMAR, scheduling, etc.)
- Supporting Systems Strategy (Finance, e-Procurement, HR, Asset Management, Billings, and etc.)
- Business Information Strategy (data to support decision making by clinicians and executive management., data warehousing, data mining and analytics )
- Sustainable Infrastructure strategy – network equipment, phone systems, servers, data storage, datacenter (space, cooling, cabling, other utilities), and etc.
The IT strategy should aim to deliver the following key outcome:
- More patient focused and informed care leading to better patient outcomes – the right information is available at the right time and in the right place; supporting patient journey by reducing adverse events; improving discharge/referral planning, improving the transition of care, and reducing risk of adverse events.
- Improved quality and safety – ensuring access to information and providing consistent / predictable processes across the organization
- More effective management of health services by reducing waiting times, patient delays, enterprise wide scheduling allowing better matching of resources to demand, planning, and a more effective resource usage
- Highly skilled workforce – with access to information and tools to do their work
- Improved collaboration to support better patient outcomes and increased efficiency
- Significant cost savings – rapid deployment of projects/programs; minimizing impact on clinicians, increasing the speed of clinical care delivery, and reducing training costs by training once for all modules rather than multiple times for each individual module.
The What & The Why
Drivers (why)
Services plan
Internal drivers
External drivers
Strategic Objectives (What)
For Clinical Systems
Business Information Supporting System
Infrastructure
Savings & benefits gained from IT investments
Strategy (How)
Implementation of core and support systems
Support and maintenance
Portfolio management and standards
Architecture and Processes.
Programs / Initiatives (Delivered Thru)
Electronic Health Record (EHR)
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)
Infrastructure
Servers, PCs, Processes, etc.
KPIs / Measures
Covering each area of the strategic objectives. You can’t know whether or not you are successful unless success is defined and tracked
Key Results
Impact on Hospital, Clinical Departments, Supporting services, etc.
