Chief Information Officer ( Cio )

Latour, Kathleen and Eichenwald-Maki, eds. (2009). HI300: Information Technology & Systems for Healthcare. Chicago: American Health Information Management Association

Over the past few years, we have notice a significant change in the workflow of a healthcare organization. This change is caused by the technological advancements of Health Information Technology (HIT). One of the many technological advancements of HIT is the Electronic Health Record (EHR). Electronic health records are a patient’s paper chart in a digital format. It always contains real time information and can be easily accessible. With EHR put into act, it has the ability to electronically view and share a patient’s medical history, past and current medications, immunization dates, any diagnoses or allergies, as well as testing and lab reports. It is also used to document and store data, in addition with many more abilities. It is important to understand the purpose, application, challenges, and advantages of an electronic heath record. In order to get a greater understanding of its use, we will use a private family medicine practice as the foundation for implementing the EHR.

IT Organizational Restructure is necessary for the current IT department to be developed into a CIO organization. Outlining a new framework and identifying roles and responsibilities will help to shape an effective organization to be in a better situation to support the company’s goals. It will also better align the current and future IT investments and

It has only been within the last five years that health information management (HIM) has experienced exponential changes, due to the healthcare reform. The electronic health record (EHR) is connected to health information exchanges and other systems of interoperability. The timely completion of charts, coding and release of information (ROI) has become much more efficient with the electronic record. Traditional HIM functions will just be transformed and will always be an integral part of successful patient care. Professionals must be flexible and willing to adapt and even generate change. As Health Information Technology continues to evolve, so will the roles

Containing ninety participants, 36% of the respondents were hospital CIOs and I.T. executives, 19% from integrated delivery systems headquarters, 19% from group practices, and 27% from other facilities. Survey results pertained to patient health records, electronic health record (EHR) certification, and other IT issues in healthcare. According to the survey, “81% of respondents said their I.T. budgets will grow, with the most common prediction being growth of 5% to 10%. Implementing electronic health records was the No. 1 software investment priority for the coming year for hospitals, integrated delivery systems and group practices alike.” (CIOs Predict Future Trends, n.d) Interestingly, despite the economy at the time showing signs of a recession, “the vast majority of health care organizations expect their information technology budgets to grow during the next fiscal year, and this growth is driven primarily by a need to improve access to information for clinicians, the survey shows.” (CIOs Predict Future Trends, n.d) This improved access to information can be applied to patients as well, as the push towards cloud storage and record/test results access alleviates the need to wait, call, and require record searches from the physician’s staff. On the subject of streamlining access to the implementation to patient EHRs, 19% of

Therefore, several authors share some of the same ideas as to what some of the barriers faced during the transition to Electronic Health Records (EHRs) and if these barriers still exist once the transition to a full EHR system is complete. Herrick, et al., 2010, states that currently, there is no hard-core evidence to support the argument that Electronic Health Record (EHRs) and Health Information Technology is the best route for health organizations to prevent errors. In fact, the use of such technology could potentially lead to errors if information incorrectly entered in the system and Haupt, 2011, statement that smart software could help to prevent life-threatening errors better when administering medicines. Whereas, Boonstra & Broekhuis, 2010, states from a physician point a view need the understanding of the possible barriers that faced during implementation of EHRs because there a tremendous amount of literature on the obstacles but no suggestion on how to resolve these barriers have not been viewed. Barriers such as, financial on great startup and ongoing cost, technical and time to train staff and how much knowledge do they have with computer skills and psychological when support needed from vendors, etc. It suggests that once those barriers have been ironed out and a plan has set in place, then the transition from paper documentation to Electronic Health Records (EHRs) may go a lot easier for the healthcare arena physician, nurses and administrative

Remember when everything was paper based and computers never existed, what happen to those days? What happen to having to do things manual? Well technology sure has changed and had made things easier and more cost effective in some ways. In the 1980s and the 1990s, Electronic Health Records (EHR) was just being introduced in such organizations such as Intermountain Health Care-Utah, Partners Healthcare-Boston, and Wishard Memorial Hospital-Indiana were among the few to see the quality and efficiency of EHR. (Byers, 2011)

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) had developed the “Use of Dense Display of Data and Information Design Principles in Primary Care Health Care Information Technology Systems (Virginia)” project, which identified the electronic health records utilization. Key recommendations is to improve the lack of standardized practices, development of process, and share information freely. These reports include core establishments in the EHR aspect in a hospital environment. The development of criteria through these practices, explore the operation of EHRs are crucial. Plus, some basic steps in utilizing IT systems would be to deliver safe, effective, and efficient care.

The use of IT in the healthcare field has been a strategic focus for necessary improvement that stands to enable more cost effective, higher-quality, and far safer patient care according to the Committee on Data Standards for Patient Safety (2003). The National quality forum conceptualized the idea of meaningful use to the nursing fraternity and believed that they were the most critical link in patient care and health delivery and hence technology tools of EHR would be best used by them The purpose of the electronic health records was to improve the health of population, coordination of care, safety improvement in patients undergoing critical and long term care, and patient and family engagement in timely access of

Many if not all healthcare systems are transferring paper-based record systems to electronic systems (Rezaeibagha, F., Win, T K., Susilo, W., 2015). Electronic health record systems or EHR are providing a better quality of services to patients in health care settings. In US, there is an estimation of 1.5 million patients harmed due too medication errors, yearly, with an estimation of 400,000 adverse events that could have been prevented (Agrawal, A. 2009). IT system based electronic health records are being implemented to improve access to information, while organizing the information, and linking it together for perfect patient outcomes. Often times

Over the last two decades the government, industry, and academia have been incraesingly recognizing the importance of health information technology. Healthcare has tended to lag other industries (like communications and financial services) in transiting to electronic records. However, as proprietary electronic medical record (EMR) systems get deployed at healthcare organization, so does the need increase to exchange records via a Health Information

Further, the speaker notes how information has impacted the healthcare system. Notable changes are the implementation of the electronic health record (EHR). Digitization in the healthcare system is evident, and many practitioners have noted with the era of advancing technology, many prefer to use paperless information as opposed to dealing with piles of documents.

There is little doubt that the role of the CIO has changed since the title emerged in the 1980s. In the past, CIOs only needed to be involved in the technical projects. In the past, the CIO was often overwhelmed with the management of servers, networks, and mainframes. Cloud computing technology has rapidly grown. With the growth of the cloud, businesses can now house data off site or purchase software as a service (SaaS) rather than building their own custom software. The change in IT has caused the role of the CIO to change as well. A recent Bloomberg article states that a CIO with only IT knowledge has become to stand for “Career is Over” (Simson, 2013).

Due to outsourcing, the CIO’s role has become less technology-centred, they instead act as the connecting factor between technology and the strategic needs of the organisation. (Gefen, Ragowsky, Licker & Stern, 2011). In the past, the CIO would provide IT solutions and infrastructure, and there would be minimal collaboration between their IT department and other departments within the organisation. Now, the CIO must be more collaborative with the business and become the business integrator, using their IT knowledge to adopt and adapt useful technology and outsourced IT

According to an article titled Current and Future Challenges: The Chief Information Officer Mastering the Power of Information , Chief Information Officers do not only manage IT resources and operations, they can also be “an enabler of business change”(leadershipexpertise.com). Primarily, they enable such changes by improving existing business processes and discovering ways to achieve leverage against competitors. This would mean seeking solutions that would please customers and employees as well.