Selecting a Health Care Information System

System Requirements User needs—“musts” and “wants” Technical criteria Administrative criteria Registration criteria Medical records criteria Order entry/results reporting Accounting criteria To determine the appropriate course of action the committee must first understand the organizations requirement. This can be accomplished by interviewing the staff from each department 2

“Musts” and “Wants” Determination of system requirements from what end users identify as essential or “nice” to have to do their work What info is necessary: patient info What is desired but not essential: voice recognition technology Selection committee develops and uses a weighting system to rank criteria identified by workers Prioritizing musts and wants: scale of 1-10 3

Technical Criteria Hardware and software needed for the desired level of system performance Type of architecture does it work with other systems? Response time Amount of time between a user action and the response from the info system One second or less Downtime Period of time when the system is operational Provide 24-hour availability with no scheduled downtime No history of frequent unscheduled downtime Architecture is the structure of the central processing unit and its interrelated elements 4

Technical Criteria Test and training environments Separate from live environment Updates to the training environment does not impact the live system Support for other technology Support touch screen entry Barcode scanning

Administrative Criteria How the system can be administratively controlled Security levels to comply with regulatory and legal requirements Different levels of security for different users Each group should have access to info its clients 6

Administrative Criteria Report capabilities Allow for specific info to be extracted from the database Ease of use Restoring data Ability to restore data from storage device

Registration criteria To ensure that the client is properly identified Unique identifier for the patient Multiple registration sites Ability to update the info Track patients location within the institution

Order entry criteria Ensure accurate entry of orders Details of the order Frequency of med Notification about duplicate entry Identify the person who entered the order Generate client’s charges

Medical record criteria Support the storage of data Allow user to access longitudinal record of pt Inquiries about the patient using various identifiers E.g. ICD-9 code Translate Dx and procedures into numeric code

Accounting criteria Facilitate reimbursement of services Generate summaries of all bills Allow to user to enter pt insurance verification data, insurance plan Link with physician billing services

Questions?