New Century Wellness Group - A Business Case

Background

A successful medical group merger known as "New Century Wellness Group" has seen exponential growth in their patient and employee base. They currently manage the wellness of over 8,000 patients while employing 26 full time medical and support staff. Dr. Jones and Dr. Garcia, the managing physicians of New Century Wellness Group have expressed a desire to expand their clinical information system to accommodate their influx of new patients as well as to manage administrative procedures (Rosenblatt, 2014 p. 42) .

Currently, New Century's administrative systems are separated into different operations managed by one individual and includes various paper and legacy based programs. Paper based systems can pose several problems because as the patient base grows, so does the real estate as document accrue. Paper is also prone to permanent damage and data loss if flooding or a fire were to occur. It is also much more difficult to edit or update paper documents, which seems necessary to the medical environment. Legacy systems are often outdated and can pose problems during mergers and usually involve ad-hoc IT solutions. Maintaining these systems can be costly and the IT logic of the system can conflict with the business logic (Rosenblatt, 2014 p. 42) .

Problem Statement
New Century Wellness seeks to expand it's operational and patient base but currently lacks the capable IT systems to do so. An expansion of any sort, whether it be staff, patients, or a geographically separated entity will require extensive updates to their current operational system. The administrative management consists of several entities managed by one person each. These include HR, payroll and profit sharing, patient records, accounts receivables, insurance, appointments and supply. These are separate systems which could be compromised if the person delegated to their specific task is unable to do so due to absence (Rosenblatt, 2014 p. 43).

If New Century keeps this operating model, the impact to the business could be potentially disruptive. Geographical expansion would be limited and system degradation could potentially effect patient records and profits to New Century. To help remediate this, New Century could consider the use of a WAN to consolidate it's records between geographic locations, as well as one singular system with the inclusion of sub systems spread out over all administrative functions that includes equal access to all employees.

Audience

Helping New Century understand the need for change is the first step toward effectively communicating a new IT system. It is important to consider that the people using this system have little to no IT background and may be apprehensive to new technology. New Century consists of medical, billing and administrative professionals with varying levels of technology experience(Rosenblatt, 2014 p. 43). HR, Billing and profit sharing individuals all share a certain degree of system proficiency, but change is always challenging.

It will be important to communicate the effectiveness of a new system while demonstrating to the employees how the new system will help them more effectively operate on a day to day basis. It is also important to let them know that these changes are for the purpose of expansion and future growth. It is also important to include all of the administrative staff whom are affected by these changes during the upgrade process. This will give them the chance to voice concerns, ask questions and share their opinions during the change process, which is important to New Century as their employee base consists of legacy and long term staff.

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