Medtech Case Study

economy, providing many stimulus opportunities in different areas, one of them being health IT. This portion of the stimulus package was given the subtitle, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH). This legislation further funded and set new mandates for the ONC, solidifying the office's existence.

as one of the ten most outstanding engineering achievements in the world over the past 50 years,

Partners HealthCare is a non-profit, health system located in Boston that created a data based transformation (Davenport, 2013). It integrated a new system that aligned the participating organizations to cohesively run as one and to help shape the future of the organization. The system didn’t stop there as it was responsible for bettering the patient financing experience and the delivery of healthcare information to other organizations (Davenport, 2013). The initial goal of the organization was making patient care more affordable and accountable by providing integrated, evidence based, patient-oriented care.

Primary care practioners must develop collaborative teams, that have practioners in the hospitals, clinics, and home. The field of informatics will be utilized to teach practioners data sharing, telemedicine, patient monitoring, patient triggers at point of service, and research data on patient outcomes and maintainence. With the addition of millions of people who will now have medical insurance, the need for primary care providers has increased the demand for APN’s in all areas. We will need additional educators and professors to teach at universities to educate more APN’s. The information technology that is required for the advanced tracking of medical information has created a great demand for APN’s in Informatics. “ telehealth is expected to reach 1.8 million Americans annually by 2017, according to the market research firm InMedica,

The high cost of healthcare continues to rise and many in the United States are optimistic for health information technology to reduce and improve our current situation. Health IT encompasses a broad array of new technologies designed to manage and share health-related information. When properly implemented, these systems can help coordinate patient care, reduce medical errors, and improve administrative efficiency. Therefore, implementing a Regional Health Information Organization (RHIO) will help the National Health Information Network (NHIN) achieve their goals in improving quality of care for the citizens of the United States. Thus, in order for the health IT to deliver on its promise, several obstacles must be overcome.

In 2009, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) were passed by the Obama legislation to try and improve healthcare for Americans by reducing costs and improving quality. The ARRA is commonly known as the ‘stimulus package’. The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) act was part of the ARRA to help improve our country’s infrastructure. HITECH supports electronic health records– meaningful use (EHR-MU) which is led by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC). HITECH allocated over $27 billion in funds to help encourage the healthcare industry in

To start, structured data capture (SDC) initiatives should be utilized in order to leverage existing EHR interoperability standards. SDC seeks to identify how interoperability technology can be used to access a template containing common data elements, populate the template with the correct common data elements from existing EHR data, and then store the template or transmit it elsewhere. Using this framework will give healthcare professionals a standard way to collect data and populate the templates, thus creating a way to access, display, and store the data. It is also important for hospitals to ensure that they are working to meet meaningful use requirements, which will help the organization to be more prepared and educated about interoperability and related issues. The Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) for Health Information Technology states that the ultimate goal is to have an interoperability system in place by 2024, one that puts “the person at the center of [the] system that can continuously improve care, public health and science through real-time data access.” In order for the goal to be achieved, however, specific actions need to be taken. It is not enough to simply state what needs to be done, but rather it is the combination of the talk and actions that will make the end-goal

In the United States, our health care system is often characterized by communication failures. According to the American Nurses Association (2012), “Care coordination has been proposed as a solution to many of the seemingly intractable problems of American health care: high costs, uneven quality, and too frequent disappointing patient outcomes” (para. 14). Care coordination is a very important aspect in nursing roles and is extremely valuable because it can improve outcomes for everyone: patients, payers, and providers. Although it is obvious that the changes will improve patient care and general efficiency, applying changes in the general approach and everyday routines may be overwhelming. Luckily, there are resources available for those interested in taking a more coordinated approach to primary care practice (“Social Media’s leading Physician Voice,” 2012).

Health Information Exchange is the electronic movement of healthcare information amongst organizations according to the national standards. HIE as it is widely known, serves the purpose of providing a safe, timely, and efficient way of accessing or retrieving patient clinical data. Health Information Exchange allows for doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and other vital healthcare professionals to have appropriate access and securely share vital medical information regarding patient care. Health Information Exchange has been in efforts of developing for over 20 years in the United States. In 1990 the Community Health Management Information Systems (CHMIS) program was formed by the Hartford Foundation to foster a development of a centralized data repository in seven different geographically defined communities. Many of the communities struggled in securing a cost-effective technology with interoperable data sources and gaining political support. In the mid-1990s a similar initiative began known as the Community Health Information Networks (CHINs) with the intention of sharing data between providers in a more cost-effective manner. In 2004, the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research Health Information Technology Portfolio was funded $166 million in grants and contracts to improve the quality and safety to support more patient-centered care. This was the beginning of the progress we have seen in HIE today. Health Information Exchange devolvement serves the purpose of improving

The road to patient-centered care was paved with the passing of the HITECH act, which authorized incentive payments through Medicare and Medicaid to clinicians and hospitals when they use EHRs privately and securely to achieve specified improvements in care delivery. If providers do not become meaningful users of EHRs by 2015, penalties will be triggered through reduced Medicare payments. These provisions aim to create a nationwide electronic health system that is efficient and secure to improve health outcomes and lower the cost of healthcare. To accomplish these goals, the federal government allotted $19.2 billion of funding to promote the adoption and meaningful use of interoperable health information technology and electronic health records (EHRs).

A patient centered medical home (PCMH) could integrate patient care. A patient centered medial home is a team of healthcare providers coming together to improve the health of a specific population. A PCMH is designed to integrate primary care and specialists into improve care coordination, safety and quality.(Stange, et al 2010) A PCMH would also improve physician training and development to provide a commitment to treat the whole patient, rather than just one part.(Stange, et al 2010) Healthcare fragmentation can also be limited through improved communication between providers using e-mail and social media tools such as facebook and twitter.

Building upon the knowledge gained in its previous attempts, over the next several years, IHC went about creating the infrastructure necessary to support such a model. IHC reorganized its management teams to include “a clinical administrative structure to be the clinical counterpart of the administrative structure at each level of the organization” (Bohmer, 2002). Guidance Councils (consisting of a physician leader and nurse manager) were formed for each clinical program and were responsible for coordinating program goals, management strategies and data collection across the system. Within the Guidance Councils were interdisciplinary Development Teams who identified “the key work processes and medical conditions for which protocols should be developed”, then created, implemented and refined said protocols (Bohmer, 2002). This was made possible by engaging practicing physicians (who were wisely reimbursed for their time) in the process, which gave them both the direct experience of the systems they created (be it paper or computer) and a provided feedback loop within the clinical community. Furthermore, IHC created a culture around process improvement, organizing “everything around value-added (front line) work processes” while offering “extensive training in clinical process improvement” as well as operational process improvement (Clark, 2010).

In health care, patients’ lives are in the hands of the health care practitioners, health care organizations, insurance companies, and to some degree, even health care technology. The growth and future implications of evidence-based medicine (EBM) through improvement of technology in health care are important today, because health care practitioners and organizations want to ultimately decrease cost, improve quality of care, and increase access to health care (Glandon, Smaltz, & Slovensky, 2014, p. 28). One way to achieve these goals is through the implementation and improvement of EBM and interoperability which will enhance the efficiency of work production resulting in these positive outcomes. According to Glandon, Smaltz, and Slovensky (2014), EBM is an “information management and learning strategy that seeks to integrate clinical expertise with the best evidence available to make effective clinical decisions that will ultimately improve patient care,” (p. 6). “Interoperability is the ability of different information and communications technology systems and software applications to communicate, to exchange data accurately, effectively, and consistently, and to use information that has been exchanged,” (Iroju, Soriyan, Gambo, & Olaleke, 2013, para. 1). Without interoperability and EBM, fundamental data and information such as patient records cannot be easily shared across and within enterprises having a direct impact on the quality of care. It

EXECUTIVE SUMMARYSilicon Valley Medical Technologies (SIVMED) was founded as a research and development firm. In the beginning, SIVMED performed its own basic research, obtained patents on promising technologies, and then either sold or licensed the technologies to other firms which marketed the products. The firm has since then grown and is now contracted to perform research and testing for larger genetic engineering firms, biotechnology firms, the US government, and is now widely recognized as the leader in an emerging growth industry. SIVMED's founders were relatively wealthy individuals when they started company, and they committed a great deal of their own funds to the venture. Their personal funds, however, were soon exhausted by the

The successful implementation and subsequent meaningful use of information technology solutions within a health care organization is a challenging and iterative process. The organization must engage in careful and ongoing strategic and tactical planning to ensure that the implemented technology will ultimately be effective and beneficial for its practitioners, staff, and patients.