Hospital Systems, Ancillary Services, and Physician Practices are often the focus of HIT initiatives.

While these settings are key areas for HIT advancement and data acquisition, there are places within the continuum of care that often lack automation or comprehensive data management strategies, creating gaps in the longitudinal health record and both an individual and population level.

The Final Project allows you to develop a comprehensive IT strategy for one of these settings of care. This week you choose the Scenario for your Final Project from the following list.

Descriptions of these settings can be found in your Learning Resources. Beginning this week, you will be building on the progressive HIT topics that culminate in your Final Project.

This week's Assignment asks you to reflect on your setting of choice as you develop a Charter for the acquisition of a strategic HIT solution.

To Prepare for this Assignment:

Review the Final Project Scenarios in your Learning Resources and select a setting of care from one of these scenarios:

Long-Term Care

Bethany Place is a 40-bed independent long-term care facility in the Pacific Northwest. They have existed for over 50 years having come from a faith-based background. With good investments and sound financial management, Bethany place has grown and is executing a capital strategic plan.

They are expanding their 40-bed facility to purchase a nearby resident facility and expand into rehabilitative care, adding another 30 beds.

They are approximately six months away from receiving the appropriate certificates and regulatory approvals as a rehabilitative care facility for both chronic care patients and recovery of acute head injury.

The rehabilitation facility and renovations to the independent long-term care facility are scheduled to begin in the next six months and be executed over an 18-month period. Currently Bethany place has no electronic medical record. There is a third-party service that is used to scan and send automated claims to Medicare and private insurers.

A local desktop IT services company was recently contracted to provide managed services to Bethany place and provides the website email and local desktop applications for staff. As part of this initiative a robust new IT network design was implemented for both Bethany place and the anticipated rehabilitation facility.

The lack of an electronic health record at Bethany place has created quality issues and risk management issues particularly related to medication reconciliation with patient transfers.

The board and senior leadership have asked the Bethany place management to evaluate information technology options in the form of an electronic medical record, and patient management application(s) for both Bethany place and the rehabilitation extension facility as part of executing the strategic plan.

Research current and specific clinical and financial management problems in these settings of care and evaluate how technology might be justified to address the most pressing challenges.

The Assignment:

Write a 3- to 4-page (excluding title and reference pages) APA style paper, addressing the following elements for the scenario .

For this Assignment, address the elements of a project Charter used to plan the acquisition of an HIT solution for the setting of choice. The Charter should include:

Problem statement. A specific statement of the problems that you intend to address in this scenario using technology solutions.

Scope of the HIT solution to be acquired. This includes both the technical elements of the scope and the business and clinical functional elements of the scope.

Stakeholders analysis including the needs of both internal and external stakeholders. This analysis includes a summary of the business and clinical system functions that the technology should address for each of the executive stakeholders.
Risk Analysis.

A specific statement of the financial, technical, legal, ethical, and operational risks involved in introducing HIT into this setting and the feasible mitigation strategies to address these risks.

Note: The paper should be 3-4 pages, not including the title and reference pages. Your Assignment must be written in standard edited English.

Be sure to support your work with 4-6 specific citations from this week's Learning Resources and additional scholarly sources as appropriate. Refer to the Essential Guide to APA Style for Walden Students to ensure that your in-text citations and reference list are correct.