Quality Improvement Initiative
Long waiting time in hospitals has led to delay in diagnosis and treatment of patients. This increase the morbidity and mortality since patients may get treatment when it’s too late. Another problem with long waiting time is that there is increased dissatisfaction for patients which makes them prefer over the counter treatment. Automated systems should be implemented in hospitals so that they can ease and streamline the treatment process. With the automated systems, hospitals can use control systems and information technologies that ensure there is reduced human work in the production and the treatment of patients. Automated hospital information system is the program that I intend to implement which will help in the reduction of long waiting time.
Purpose of the program: the purpose of this program is to act as the solution for the long waiting time where all the processes in the hospital become automated. This ensures that there is reduced human control in the transmission of information from one department to another. It also reduces paperwork where patient information is transmitted from a physician to other departments to ease treatment. The program will also ensure treatment of patients in the remote area. That is where telecommunication will also be included as part of automated health information system.
Target population: the project targets all patients either who attend hospitals on inpatient or outpatient basis. These are the target as they will be the beneficiaries of the program once it is implemented. Patient information will easily move from one physician to another through the information system which will not require them to carry treatment history from one hospital to another. Patients in the remote area are also target population of the automated information system as they will benefit from getting treatment from their regions.
Benefits of the program
Automation of healthcare information will be beneficial to a hospital as well as the patients. This is because it saves on labor where technology is used instead of manual work. Hospitals without automated healthy information system have a lot of paper work that increases time on management and retrieving of the paper records. Labor is spent where healthcare providers have to keep track of patient information manually. Automation of health information system will reduce labor for healthcare providers as well as patients.
Another benefit will be reduced waiting time for patients. This is because the more time in the healthcare facilities is spent when tracking patient history from the records. When the systems are automated, retrieving patient information is easy and require less time which will reduce waiting time.
Another benefit is that there will be reduced waste since papers and spreadsheets that have been in sue will no longer be used. The use of papers leads to increased waste since the rough papers can easily be thrown anywhere which pollutes the environment. Implementation of automated health information system will help in reduction of waste as well as ensuring clean environment.
Automated health information system will improve quality of care as well as ensure consistency. This is because patients will be treated on time and there will be increased satisfaction. There will be reduced morbidity and mortality since patients will be attended on time. The system also ensures minimized errors that are likely to be caused by humans which will increase efficiency of the processes done. Humans are prone to errors and fatigue that can lead to increased error, but with automated information system, efficiency and quality of information are ensured.
There will be high throughput when the information system is automated. This is because healthcare providers will handle a larger population of patients at a time. Automation of health information system will ensure that the turnaround time for each patient is short which will increase efficiency of diagnosis and treatment.
With automation of health information system, patients will follow a standardized care path which will ensure that all patients can easily be followed up in case of deviation from care. This is because the system books them and it can keep track of each patient record which assist physician to track the progress of each patient.
The Cost or Budget justification
For the project to be successful, the amount required is $20,000 which is inclusive of the systems required by the hospital as well as compensation of vendors. The cost includes planning and implementation of the system to all departments within a facility. The money will be used for implementation of the automated health information system which will reduce the waiting time for each patient while in the hospital. There will be improved quality of care, and the cost will cater for increased satisfaction of patients.
Evaluation of the Project
The project will be evaluated by the use of logic model of evaluation. This will where the program will be assessed according to the clinical problems that the intervention is aimed at solving. If it meets the objective of reducing patient waiting time and improving quality of care, the system will be assumed to be effective.
Do you believe the proposal will be approved if it is formally proposed?
What do you believe to be strengths and weaknesses of the proposal?