Health care organizations are constantly striving to keep up with technological advances in order to provide the best quality patient care imaginable. Success depends on implementing an information system that is designed to meet the quality standards set for the health care industry. Implementing an information system can be a big challenge, which is why choosing an information system that will assist the organization in meeting their goals is important. Including stakeholder input is also vital to ensuring the correct system is chosen.
This briefing will discuss the process of selecting and acquiring an information system, how the goals of the organization, and how the stakeholders affect the selection process. Selection and Acquisition In order to begin to select and acquire an information system a project steering committee will need to be chosen to oversee the project. A Project manager will be appointed to lead the committee. The team will be responsible for determining the process of implementation and conduct research in regards to which type of information system best suits the organization’s needs.
All health care processes within the organization must be identified and standards must be set for each of them. The committee will also define the projects objectives and determine the scope of analysis needed to evaluate the organization’s system requirements. The marketplace should be screened and vendors should be evaluated. Once the system goals have been identified the committee will prioritize those goals. A request for information form will need to be created and distributed.
Options should be examined to choose which method of acquiring the system would be best, an application service provider, or to build an in-house system by contracting a system developer. The organization should receive proposals from the analysis of vendors; they will need to be evaluated. Evaluation criteria will be identified in order to hold vendor demonstrations, visit sites, check references, and prepare the final vendor analysis for review by the committee.
Cost-benefit analysis will need to be conducted and a summary of finding and the committee’s recommendations should be prepared. Finally, the organization will negotiate a contract for the information system acquisition. Implications of Organizational Goals According to Wager, Wickham Lee, & Glaser (2009) “Health care professionals need access to reliable, complete, and accurate information in order to provide effective and efficient health care services and to achieve the strategic goals of the organization.
The organization’s goals should be upheld in all aspects and at each step of the selection, acquisition, and implementation processes. The information system should not be selected until all options are evaluated by cost, benefit, and ample input from key stakeholders. The concept of formulating a strategy suggests that an organization needs to identify what activities and initiatives they will commit to in order to achieve their mission and goals. For example, an IT project committee may have the goal to combine clinical application systems.
In order to succeed choices may need to be made between different options such as a single sign-on option, use of a clinical application suite, or use of a common database (Wager, Wickham Lee, & Glaser, 2009). Health information technology (HIT), if not implemented correctly can be disastrous to the organization. According to Doebbeling and Pekny, PhD (2008) “the probability of a successful HIT implementation is greatly increased by a well-characterized, deliberately designed host set of health care processes.
Furthermore, expectations of HIT within a health care process must be realistic with respect to benefits and costs. ” (p. 501). Stakeholder Roles Each of the stakeholders in an organization’s project has roles and expectations. Stakeholders should always participate in project steering committees and lend their skills and knowledge to new ventures. Commonly stakeholders wish to determine the actual and future value of the information system implementation project by way of project status reports and monitoring.
Stakeholders can be identified as doctors, nurses, administrators, business managers, and CEO’s. Anyone who holds an interest in the success or failure of the organization could be considered to be a stakeholder. Patients are included as stakeholders as well. Especially since the patient is the source of the data to be entered into the information system. Stakeholders are vital to the selection and acquisition processes. Information systems are being implemented to improve organization’s functions overall and can be less challenging if the selection and acquisition steps are followed.
The organizations goals are a major factor in all aspects of implementing a new information system. Stakeholder’s involvement in the process of implementation is key and can ensure that the system is user friendly, meets organizational goals, is realistic, and fiscally manageable. In summary, this briefing has discussed three major components of the process of selecting and acquiring an information system for a health care organization.