How do I Develop an Information System for Acute & Chronic Care Services?

An information system for acute and chronic care services serves two major purposes. You enhance managerial decision-making and improve operational efficiency and effectiveness by providing useful data. You can create a modern information system by integrating people, procedures, data, hardware and software.

Instructions

• 1

  List the items of information you want your system to collect and choose a method for organizing them. You could make the principal organizational unit the patient, the presenting or diagnosed condition or illness, the principal service provided or the provider of services. A system that just counts the number of patients and services is the easiest to create and install. A more complicated system might include units of time assigned to each activity and staff's treatment notes. Make the data easy to enter by using a software program designed for your situation or by adapting a generic program.

• 2

  Form a small group of stakeholders, such as doctors, therapists and clerks. Describe the objectives for the system and test your proposed organizational ideas and information items with them. Explain how the benefits of the system will help them, the patients and the organization. Get approval for the information system objectives, design and costs from senior managers.

• 3

  Identify what equipment will be needed, where it will be placed, who will have access to it and what entries and modifications they are allowed to make. A system could have one person trained to make all the entries from pencil and paper forms submitted by staff. You can develop a system in which all staff members enter data for their patients directly into the system. No system is better than the completeness and accuracy of the data entered. If you decide that everyone will enter data, conduct training sessions and plan for follow-up monitoring.

• 4

  Design a process for making the raw data useful. Data can be descriptive, such as the number of patients who had a specific disease or condition that lasted five days or fewer compared with those who took more time for a resolution of their illness. Data can be predictive, such as finding that for a percentage of patients with diabetes surgery to remove a limb will become necessary. This informs you that treatment by a therapist in the use of artificial limbs will be needed.

• 5

  Arrange for saving data at frequent intervals and off-site storage of the archived data. The organization cannot afford to lose this valuable information.

• 6

  Prepare a list of findings that should be communicated, to whom what findings need to be sent and at what time intervals. Review the data on a regular basis and what use is made of them. Check your observations against your original objectives to determine what improvements to the system would be helpful.