Assignment Background

Health leaders make decisions every day about market, quality, and financial strategies. In resource-constrained environments, the use of evidence is paramount to making responsible decisions for the organization, community, or nation. When we think about acquiring a new organization, building a new facility, or opening a new health service line we must consider those strategies in light of how technologies can make the business strategy more effective. Rather than viewing technology as purely transactional and operational, transformational leaders envision ways to leverage technology to leapfrog competition and help their organizations grow.

In doing so, difficult decisions must be made every day. Current paradigms, workflow, investments, and ways of doing business are often disrupted by innovative technologies. It is your role as a leader to not only consider how to pay for technology but how to use the technology in the most strategic fashion possible to drive down costs and create new levels of quality.

This week you will formulate an executive presentation that involves a set of recommendations about how to plan and leverage technology in the intensive care environment. You are asked to base your recommendations on evidence with a focus on the most appropriate strategy for the organization.

Assignment: Data Driven Decision Making

As a health care leader you will be responsible for not only the acquisition planning and management of HIT solutions but also for strategies to manage the different types of data acquired by these technologies. The aim for today's health care leaders is to effectively plan making evidence-based decisions using data acquired through the use of HIT systems.

For this Assignment, you will evaluate the expansion of United General Hospital's intensive care unit (ICU). You will create a detailed presentation with comprehensive presenter notes that explain each slide for United General's CEO and board of directors.

To prepare:

Read the United General Hospital ICU Expansion Case Study in your Learning Resources and prepare a PowerPoint presentation (16 slides minimum, with no more than 20 slides excluding your references) that will guide the CEO and board of directors to follow the recommendation(s) presented to expand the hospital's ICU unit. Keep in mind that this presentation would be delivered within a one hour time slot in a board of director's meeting, whereby you want to allow approximately 2 minutes per slide for presentation delivery and allow time for questions. As you complete the assessment, remember the following:
- The presentation should include the elements necessary to effectively communicate the data used to develop the business case.
- A specific statement of the clinical and financial data types involved in the business case should be included.
- The presentation should provide a clear evidence-based, data-driven recommendation(s) regarding the expansion of the hospital's ICU.
- The presentation should provide an opportunity statement that presents the problem, the recommendation presented to solve the problem, and the multiple options considered.
- The presentation should take into account the needs of the community, the patients, the hospital, and investors when researching and presenting your findings.
- The presentation should offer alternative methods of data management such as cloud-based storage and the possible use of Application Service Provider (ASP) HIT models.
Your presentation should include the following:

Introduction (5-6 slides)

Explain the importance of evidence-based decision making in health care. Discuss how this evidence applies to patient care outcomes, financial outcomes, competitive advantage, and organizational transparency. Your slides must include:
- A definition of evidence-based decision making.
- An explanation of the relevance of evidence-based decision making in the health care industry.
- A clearly defined the problem you intend to solve through the use of evidence-based decision making.
- A description of the types of HIT systems that recommend to support decision making.

Recommendation & Rationale (8-11 slides)

Using the data provided, analyze the current and future state of the ICU. Consider three scenarios for the future state, one without additional beds and two with additional beds. Based on your research and analysis, determine two viable scenarios for bed count and present these scenarios. Use graphics, text, and charts as required.

The slides and presenter notes should include:

- An overview of three options for the ICU that you analyzed. The presenter notes should provide a 2- to 3-paragraph analysis of the three options, using academic resources to support your options.

- A description of how each option will address the issues in the ICU. The presenter should provide 2- to 3-paragraph detailed explanation of how each option will address the issues in the ICU.

- A final recommendation for one of the options and an explanation of why it will maximize the benefits to the hospital, patients, and community.

- A detailed rationale justifying your recommendation.

- A graphic comparison between the current state of the ICU vs. the remote monitoring ICU implementation in 5 years. The presenter notes should include a detailed explanation of the graphic.

- An explanation of the impact of your recommendation on staffing, productivity, competitiveness, and finances, using appropriate qualitative and quantitative data to support your explanation. The presenter notes should include an explanation regarding how the data supports your explanation.

Evidence Evaluation
Knowing that United General's leadership team focuses on evidence-based decision making, address the following, in 3-4 slides:
- Summarize the evidence used in developing the opportunity statement and recommendation.
- Describe why each piece of evidence is relevant to patients, the community, and the hospital.
- Summarize the analysis used to create the recommendation.
- Evaluate the validity and reliability of the data.
- Recommend methods to improve the validity and reliability of the data.

Discussion Post

Industry consolidation, regulation, and reduced reimbursement revenues compel organizations to critically examine IT investments and vendor partner strategies. Partners that supply applications such as patient or member management systems as well as electronic health records are key relationships for industry leaders.

This week introduces you to the challenges involved in making strategic decisions with regard to the composition of software applications in the organization. The costs and benefits of integrating disparate financial and clinical applications are a focus of this week's Discussion as you are asked to think strategically about the relationship between financial and clinical information.

Learning Objectives
Students will:
- Evaluate the benefits and challenges of best of breed and monolithic systems integration strategies
- Analyze the relationship between clinical and financial information systems
- Assess the impact of HIT vendor partner decisions on organizations' clinical and business strategies
- Analyze types of data and data analytic strategies to make evidence-based decisions
- Assess alternate methods of managing data using best practices in information technology

Discussion Post: Challenging Decisions-Best of Breed or Monolithic Systems

Note: For this discussion you are required to complete your initial post before you will be able to view and respond to your colleague's postings. Begin by clicking on the "Post to Discussion Question" link and then select "Create Thread" to complete your initial post. Remember, once you click submit, you cannot delete or edit your own posts, and cannot post anonymously. Please check your post carefully before clicking Submit!

The implementation of the ACA means that there are thousands more patients coming into local health systems. There is also a trend of larger heath care delivery systems acquiring and/or affiliating with smaller hospitals and physicians to leverage economies of scale to meet regulatory requirements and secure the share of local markets. These trends often mean that health care leaders must examine information systems strategies at a macro organizational level and make key vendor decisions about which HIT solutions to maintain and grow or eliminate as a part of overall systems integration planning.

One of the key decisions that leaders face is whether to bundle financial (registration, scheduling, and billing) information systems along with clinical (EMR) systems in monolithic vendor strategies or whether to spread risk and have varied HIT vendor partners for clinical and business solutions while implementing an interface solution.

To prepare:
- Read the Learning Resources and research references regarding IT strategies, specifically best of breed and monolithic vendor systems used to achieve integration.
- Consider private payers including pay for performance "bundled" payments as discussed in the Dynamic Scenario in Week 4. How do private payers play into your thinking about clinical and financial information systems strategies?

Post:
A recommendation of either a best of breed or monolithic systems integration strategy. Justify your recommendation. Evaluate the issues involved in each. Describe how private payers play into your thinking about clinical and financial information systems strategies. Describe the role of vendor/client site relationships in these types of decisions. Support your rationale with references.

Reading Materials -

https://www.dropbox.com/s/6752ggbv49323qt/Reading%20Materials%20-%2025%20sep%2017.zip?dl=0