The Board of Directors of Bright Road Health Care System is considering which electronic health record (EHR) system to use and how to implement the EHR in all of its facilities.
This scenario accurately illustrates that capital investment decisions involve a number of interrelated factors that need to be taken into consideration. Quite frankly, in business, there is all too often a rush to make decisions when ample time exists to gather relevant information, explore options, and make sound and supportable choices. Hasty decisions can result in four (4) potential outcomes:
a) make a bad situation worse;
b) permanently improve a desired outcome;
c) temporarily improve a desired outcome, or
d) perhaps neither improve nor worsen the situation.
As a result, healthcare leaders need to utilize a careful and methodical approach when making decisions.
It needs to be understood, that in many cases, management has time to carefully consider alternatives and consequences prior to making a decision; however, this isn't always the case. In reality, there are occasions when quick decision-making is a necessity and taking too much time to make a decision could have disastrous consequences. There are a number of tools and techniques designed to assist management in solving problems and making sound decisions. Some of these approaches are qualitatively-oriented whereas others are more quantitative in nature. In this realistic scenario, the uses of qualitative and quantitative data are to be considered when making a significant capital investment involving the acquisition of a new electronic health record system.
Based on their observations, in this scenario, and upon a careful review of the available literature, the student will assume the role of a Health Care IT consultant whose firm has been contracted to explore two EHR systems. As the consultant, the student will work with various team members, at the corporate level, to gather relevant information and analyze the efficacy, safety/security/legal factors, cost effectiveness, and cost-benefit factors of two possible new systems to help the organization (via the Board) decide whether or not to implement one of the two systems. A formal recommendation will be submitted to the Board of Directors on which of the two systems, if either, should be acquired. The Board has requested that the recommendation include, but not be limited to, a decision tree analysis of the options, including maintaining the status quo. This recommendation should be logically presented, well-supported, and thoroughly vetted.
Guidance: Construct a decision tree that includes one decision node (purchase a new EHR system) or maintain the status quo (retain the existing EHR system). There are the two EHR systems under consideration by Bright Road Health Care System, eMed and Patient Data System (PDS). For each EHR system under consideration, you, as the consultant, will be looking to determine the likelihood (probability) that the system will: fully meet the organization's needs; partially meet the organization's needs; or not meet the organization's needs. You will need to come up with the probabilities using information obtained from the scenario, as well as information gleaned from credible sources. In addition, you, as the consultant, will be expected to determine the expected outcomes (payoffs) associated with each alternative.
The expected outcomes (payoffs) can be the total costs associated with each alternative, the net present value of the alternatives, the internal rate of return or modified internal rate of return, etc. Remember, all assumptions used to construct the decision tree and analyze the data should be supported.
The decision tree and other quantitative (financial) analyses used to support the recommendation should be performed using Microsoft Excel and the resulting information (findings) incorporated into the formal recommendation. The recommendation should be prepared as a MicrosoftTM Word document, and then attached to the unit discussion thread. There is no minimum or maximum in terms of the word count; however, the response should explicitly address all required components of this discussion assignment. The document should be prepared consistent with the APA writing style (6th edition) and reflect higher level cognitive processing (analysis, synthesis and or evaluation). The Excel spreadsheet used to perform the decision tree and other quantitative analyses should be uploaded into the unit discussion thread.
Attachment:- Transcript-for-Discussion-Question.rar