ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT OF A HEALTH CARE FACILITY
Organization and Management of a Health Care Facility
We Care Hospital is a for healthcare facility involves various levels of management which are aimed at meeting the goals of the organization. For a healthcare facility to achieve its aim of promoting health and preventing diseases and injuries, it must be well organized with the best management that will enable all the functioning of the facility to run smoothly. Missions and vision of the facility must be well stated, and the professionals must be hired according to their skills and experience of the work. It has also adopted the use of electronic health records to increase the quality of care and promote patients’ safety. The organization must ensure that the health professionals are hired from the right places and are well qualified to meet the expectations of the hospital’s mission and visions.
The hospital organization structure of the hospital I am in entails several individuals who are responsible for the management of the organization functions. It involves the vertical organization structure with the board of directors at the top of the structure (Harper, C. (2015). Directors in a hospital are chosen from the healthcare sector and the community and must be very influential in the works of the organization. Their responsibilities in the hospital are to ensure that all the operations of the hospital are running smoothly and in the case of poor operations, they gather and come up with a solution. They are the ones who decide on the organization missions and visions and whether they can join an affiliation agreement as an organization.
Administration services department level involves the senior CEO, Executive assistants, department heads and the vice president. Their roles are to come up with hospital policies and procedures, oversee budgeting and finance and perform public relations duties.
Information services department involves documentation and processing of hospital information. They include medical, billing, human resource manager, information technology, admissions, and discharges among others. They provide the hospital information that is used to evaluate the operation of the hospital for making better decisions.
Therapeutic services department includes services meant to provide treatment to a patient in an organization structure. Services provided at this level include occupational therapy, physical therapy, respiratory therapy, social services, pharmacists, psychologists among others. This is the department where all known cases are handled to restore the health of a patient.
Diagnostic services department includes services that determine the causes of injury or illness. They include medical laboratory, emergency medicine, radiology, cardiology, neurology among others (Harper, 2015). The department enables the determination if a diagnosis so that a physician can go ahead to treat the condition.
Support services department is also included in the hospital structure, and it caters for all the services that provide support for the entire hospital. It includes central supply where all the orders of the hospital are made, housekeeping and maintenance, where all equipment is repaired and maintained clean and safe. The transportation department is also under this structure
Levels of professional within the organization
Administration
Informational services
Therapeutic Services
Diagnostic Services
Support Services
This level involves the senior CEO, Executive assistants, department heads and the vice president.
Their roles are to come up with hospital policies and procedures, oversee budgeting and finance and perform public relations duties.
They are the people in the hospital who document and process information. They include medical record officer, billing officer, human resource manager, information technology technician among others.
This level includes all the professionals in an organization who provides treatment to patients. Services provided in this level include occupational therapy, physical therapy, respiratory therapy, social services, pharmacists, psychologists among others.
This level includes professionals who determine the causes of injury or illness. They include medical laboratory technician, emergency doctors, radiography among other professions in this level.
Includes all the health professionals who provide services that provide support for the entire hospital. It includes central supply where all the orders of the hospital are made, housekeeping and maintenance, where all equipment are repaired and maintained clean and safe.
The duties of major heads within the organization
The board of directors has the duties to ensure that all the operations of the hospital are running smoothly and in the case of poor operations, they gather and come up with a solution. They are responsible for making decisions on the organization missions and visions and whether they can join an affiliation agreement as an organization. They also oversee any market demands for the organization and looks for ways to tackle them.
Executives are also part of the organizational structure, and they are expected to implement the decisions made by the board to the day-to-day operations of the hospital. They are responsible for all the functions that run in the hospital, therefore, should keep informed on the operations of the hospital so that they may give a report that will enable decision-making by the board (McWilliams et al., 2016).
Department administrators are usually the top managers in each department of the hospital. They monitor all the operations in the department and only take care of the department they have specialized in. In some departments, for instance, clinical departments, the administrators have assistants’ administrators since the departments have many staffs which become hard to monitor all (McWilliams, Hatfield, Chernew, Landon & Schwartz, 2016). The assistants carry out some of the responsibilities for the administrators while in the department.
Patient care managers also make part of the organization structure, and they ensure that the staff members are acting appropriately to provide quality healthcare to a patient. They may include nurse managers, rehabilitation services directors and supervising physicians who know the expectation of the human resource in their field of professional and monitor them so that they comply with hospital and legal requirement. They are the ones who handle the complaint made by either a patient towards a clinician or a clinician towards a patient.
HITECH ACT
The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act is among the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act that was initiated in the year 2009. ARRA is an act that contains specific incentives that are designed to accelerate the adoption of electronic health records for all medical providers. HITECH ACT anticipates having massive expansion in how electronic health information is exchanged as well as widening the scope of privacy and security protections under HIPAA. The act also increases the potential for legal liability for all non-compliant professionals and provides room for more enforcement of privacy and security of patient information.
HITECH ACT has assisted We Care Hospital in the adoption of electronic health records. The ACT provides all the legal requirements for electronic health records which will assist nurses and other medical providers in the hospital to maintain privacy and security of patient data. The ACT has improved the quality and efficiency of care offered in this hospital by ensuring complete implementation and adoption of EHR by medical providers (Jalali & Kaiser,2018). The act has ensured that computers are not only installed in physicians’ offices but are being used towards increasing patient safety, improving quality of care, increasing patient involvement in their care as well as promoting coordination of care among various healthcare providers.
An example of a HIPAA violation case associated with computer technology when using patient records is that of Cottage Health where OCR agreed to settle the case with $ 3,000,000. The case involved removal of protections on servers which led to access of electronic patient health information over the internet without the need for using usernames and passwords. During this scandal, patient information of more than 62, 500 patients were exposed and the reason according to OCR was due to lack of appropriate risk analysis and lack of conducting technical and non-technical evaluations to the hospital systems (Wager, Lee & Glaser, 2017). Such failures led access of patient information by unauthorized personnel, and this was a violation to HIPAA ACT.
Feasibility plan for protecting patient records
Data is important in all healthcare organizations as it helps in identification of patient illness, diagnosis, and treatment. Without patient records and other personal health information, nurses and providers would not tell the best care to offer to a patient and may fail to diagnose a condition as it should be. Patients’ records are vital and sensitive which means that if they are not handled as expected, the data can put the patient at risk as well as the overall healthcare. Besides, patients’ records are a target for cyber-attacks where medical organizations are put into risk of information leakage. Massive cyber-attacks in healthcare organizations are reported daily, and in most cases, physicians do not protect their electronic patient records as expected (Hill-Kayser, Jacobs, Gabriel, Palmer, Hampshire, Vachani & Metz, 2016). A systematic plan that can be used to ensure the safety of patients’ records is important to minimize challenges experienced when using electronic health records.
Healthcare organizational practices lack basic security policies and procedures where we find staff members sharing passwords and fail to log out whenever they use an electronic health record system. Such conducts increase risk to patient data and the process to maintain security to such data start by conducting a security risk assessment which will help in identification of the areas of high risk for patient data leakage. Evaluation of the systems is done at this step to unearthing the faulty areas that can expose patient information to unauthorized persons (Hill-Kayser et al., 2016). Secondly, patient data should be encrypted before it is sent to the relevant authority to avoid access by any middle person with access to the systems. Encryption can be used alongside with antivirus programs and firewalls to enhance privacy and security of data. This is because encryption alone can be ineffective if the system is accessed and a password is used to access data.
After encryption, control of system access is done, and this depends on the practice network and how EHR and management systems are hosted. Then, all the users should be authenticated with login and password so that they are the only people who can access patient information. The logins and passwords should be complex in a way that hackers cannot cram them. Two-factor authentication is the most preferred in this case where biometrics is also used besides the normal logins and passwords. Remote access is also provided securely so that providers in remote locations can access information without being hacked. Also, the systems should be made with role-based access which is configured as software to limit different levels of the system to employees who should use such type of data (Hill-Kayser et al., 2016). With different levels of employees accessing different data, it is assured that patient information will be protected.
The reason I selected the above plan is that it ensures patient data is protected in all means. While it is not the only plan that can be used to assure security, it has proved its effectiveness in most cases since patient data can only be accessed by authorized personnel. The plan is suitable as it promotes data sharing among various providers while maintaining the privacy and security of patients‘ data. The plan ensures that data is protected in all ways and allows for assessment of the systems to check for where data can easily be breached.
Use of information technology to increase patient services
Use of health information technology has been adopted in many of the healthcare facilities in the 21st century due to its efficiency in the delivery of care. It is seen to reduce the patient waiting time while in the hospital, and the patient can be treated wherever he/she is by the use of e-health (Soomro, Shah & Ahmed, 2016). Telemedicine has also assisted in treating patients in remote areas.
Pros of using information technology
Cons of using information technology
Have improved accessibility of data whenever one can be. This has enabled an easy continuation of treatment from another hospital with less involvement of the patient.
The use of preventive care health screening where a doctor can schedule the patient using the system and inform her of the same (Soomro, Shah & Ahmed, 2016).
Providers are having communicated on the way to handle a case by the use of mobiles which have worked effectively with less cost involved.
It is easy to keep track of how equipment is being used in a hospital.
Lack of interoperability between hospital systems is a problem as not all the hospitals are using the same system.
The cost of coming up with the system and maintaining it is high, therefore, a disadvantage to the facility with fewer resources.
Acceptability by staff is low in some organizations as they feel their employment is being replaced with computers where they will require fewer people with computer skills.
Need for regular updates of the system of a problem as the change is inevitable, this discourages some of the organizations to use it.
In conclusion, the management of the hospital is the key to all the decisions that are made. Whether to hire nurses or to implement a computer system, all are determined by the hospital management which makes decisions according to the available resources. Planning is also done in every department of the hospital so the managers of the department should regularly give feedback.
References
Harper, C. (2015). Organizations: Structures, processes and outcomes. Routledge.
Hill-Kayser, C. E., Jacobs, L. A., Gabriel, P., Palmer, S. C., Hampshire, M. K., Vachani, C., … & Metz, J. M. (2016). Feasibility study of an electronic interface between internet-based survivorship care plans and electronic medical records. Journal of oncology practice, 12(4), e380-e387.
Jalali, M. S., & Kaiser, J. P. (2018). Cybersecurity in Hospitals: A Systematic, Organizational Perspective. Journal of medical Internet research, 20(5).
McWilliams, J. M., Hatfield, L. A., Chernew, M. E., Landon, B. E., & Schwartz, A. L. (2016). Early performance of accountable care organizations in Medicare. New England Journal of Medicine, 374(24), 2357-2366.
Soomro, Z. A., Shah, M. H., & Ahmed, J. (2016). Information security management needs more holistic approach: A literature review. International Journal of Information Management, 36(2), 215-225.
Wager, K. A., Lee, F. W., & Glaser, J. P. (2017). Health care information systems: a practical approach for health care management. John Wiley & Sons.