IT Management Plan

Question

Over the years, IT management has changed from providing small, departmentalized support to a centralized support structure, but now there is some evidence that the decentralized approach may provide more rapid and customized support. Develop and post a plan you would use to support the main electronic medical record (EMR), networking, and departments such as radiology, laboratory, and pharmacy. How would the administrative structure work for your plan? How would users know which support services to contact in the face of a technology failure? 

Answer

IT Management Plan

IT management emerged as an important aspect of the contemporary healthcare system. Over the years, emphasis has moved from a decentralized pattern to a centralized one. Even though this move was offset by budgetary and efficiency-related factors, the decentralized system has also demonstrated a strong potential to maintain the efficiency of the IT integration process itself. This paper provides an administrative and IT plan that would support the establishment of electronic medical records, networking and functional departments, primarily laboratory, radiation and pharmacy.

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In order to develop a plan that would work efficiently for the different hospital functions, there is a need to synchronize the administrative and informational services. Administrative services are controlled by the hospital administrators such as CEO, Vice president, and department heads. Other stakeholders include business people and investors who operate the business aspects of the institution. These officials are in charge of budgeting, establishing policies, reforms and regulating the hospital’s public relations function (Geisler, Krabbendam & Schuring, 2003). On the other hand, the informational functions revolve around admission, releases, billing, medical records and treatment.

The process of synchronizing the IT system for all the institutional functions requires organization within each function. As an example, the coordination of treatment programs would not be possible if the medical record system has failed. This would completely disrupt all processes within the health center and force the use of a mechanical procedures that are both time-consuming and inefficient. The plan would focus on creating autonomy for each of the departments before linking them to an interdependent system. This autonomy would mean that each department would remain reasonably functional whenever other departments were experiencing difficulties.

The IT management plan must also be incorporated into the process of strategic planning. This will ensure that the plan incorporates software and hardware engineers who are available and on call to adjust the system and enforce reform where technical failures occur. These engineers and other internal leaders must possess the ability to project the future needs of the institution and alter the IT strategy as required. The IT management strategy should primarily focus on monitoring the IT systems, identifying new and upcoming systems and enforcing continuous integration of the IT system into the administrative unit. This can be further promoted through learning and creating avenues of engagement between the administrative and IT plans (Geisler, Krabbendam & Schuring, 2003).

It is of great importance to notice that while making human resource considerations is of utmost value, financial and budgetary considerations are also as important. Thus, this plan will outline the financial implications after the available budgeting and projection estimates are analyzed. Meanwhile, the specific areas that will require extra funding include data collection and data synthesis. A careful consideration of these areas is required, otherwise they would end up being severely underfunded. In addition, their heavy financial implications would limit any spontaneous needs that may arise later on. This would therefore derail the performance and automation of the system.

To avoid these challenges, the planning process must be strategic and all-encompassing in terms of addressing all IT and administrative needs. This way, the IT function will greatly improve the level of performance of the technical aspects of the healthcare system. One final point worth noting is that even though the option of IT in the healthcare industry has been rather slow compared to that of other industries, its gradual success in terms of integration arises from meticulous planning, testing and quick elimination of obsolete systems.

References

 Geisler, E., Krabbendam, K. & Schuring, R. (2003). Technology, Health Care and Management in the Hospital of the Future. Westport: Praeger.