Part 1

Within the Discussion Board area, write 400–600 words that respond to the following questions with your thoughts, ideas, and comments. This will be the foundation for future discussions by your classmates. Be substantive and clear, and use examples to reinforce your ideas.

The chief information officer (CIO) of CTU Health Care wants you, the manager of the information systems department, to ensure that the employees within your department are aware of the challenges facing the department since the implementation of the electronic health record (EHR). Discuss the following:

• Discuss 5 major challenges that are currently facing the department.
• Discuss the impact of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) on these challenges.

Part 2

Write a paper of 3-4 pages, not including the title page and reference page, that addresses the following:

As the manager of the CTU Health Care information systems department, the chief information officer (CIO) has asked you to complete the following:

• Analyze the implications and challenges of cost, quality, and external forces on electronic health record (EHR) or electronic medical record (EMR) selection and implementation within your department.
• Conduct research on 1 major external threat facing the EHR today.

Note: Use APA style and cite at least 2 scholarly references published within the last 5 years.

Part 3

Within the Discussion Board area, write 400–600 words that respond to the following questions with your thoughts, ideas, and comments. This will be the foundation for future discussions by your classmates. Be substantive and clear, and use examples to reinforce your ideas.

As the manager of the CTU Health Care information systems department, complete the following:

• Define health information governance.
• Discuss the major components of health information governance and its importance on health care organization information systems.
• Discuss the importance of communication and information governance.

Note: Use APA style and cite at least 2 scholarly references published within the last 5 years.

Part 4

Write a paper of 3-4 pages, not including the title page and reference page, that addresses the following:

As the manager of the CTU Health Care information systems department, complete the following:

• Discuss how you would go about implementing a health information technology (HIT) strategic plan for data security, privacy, and quality management for your organization.
• Discuss why the steering committee is very important for the success of the HIT strategic plan, and explain who should be included on the steering committee and why.
• There are seven major elements that must be included in a strategic plan for it to be successful. Discuss how you would incorporate three of the seven elements if you were to develop a plan, and discuss which departments would be included on the steering committee and why.
  • For example, if reducing medical errors is a major priority for the organization, then this goal must be reflected in the priorities for the HIT development, paying attention to medical records, clinical protocols, and clinical decision support systems (CDSS).

Elements of a strategic plan include the following:

• Statement of corporate goals and objectives
• Statement of HIT goals and objectives
• Priorities for the application portfolio
• Specifications of overall HIT architecture and infrastructure
• Software development plan
• HIT management and staffing
• Statement of resource requirement

Part 5

Within the Discussion Board area, write 400–600 words that respond to the following questions with your thoughts, ideas, and comments. This will be the foundation for future discussions by your classmates. Be substantive and clear, and use examples to reinforce your ideas.

As the manager of the CTU Health Care information systems department, you recognize that change management is critical to the success of the implementation of the electronic health record (EHR) or electronic medical record (EMR). You also recognize that change management requires cultivating and managing realistic expectations of all of the departments involved.

For this assignment, you must explain how you would guide the change process among team members and departments. Consider the following questions:

• Who are the stakeholders?
• Who are the users?
• How will you handle resisters to change?
• How will you achieve buy-in for the change process?
• How will you address low computer literacy levels among physicians and employees?

Part 6 (6-8 slides)

As the manager of the CTU Health Care information systems department, you realize the need for seamless integration among all operating systems of the departments within the health care organization (HCO). Discuss the importance electronic health record (EHR) conceptual framework integration and achieving interoperability.

Prepare a PowerPoint presentation for the stakeholders of the different departments that expresses the importance of the interoperability of all computing systems within the health care organization. In this presentation, you should address the ramifications of the lack of integration of the information systems among the departments.

Part 7

Within the Discussion Board area, write 400-600 words that respond to the following questions with your thoughts, ideas, and comments. This will be the foundation for future discussions by your classmates. Be substantive and clear, and use examples to reinforce your ideas.

CTU Health Care Systems has five clinics that serve nearly 2 million residents in a large metropolitan area and treat over 500,000 patients annually. Now that you have successfully implemented the electronic health record (EHR) at the main facility, it is time to integrate the clinic’s information technology (IT) with the main hospital’s EHR. In preparation for the implementation of an EHR system for the five clinics, the health care system implemented an electronic document (ED) and content management (CM) system to handle the imaging, indexing, and storage of selected hard copy documents from active patient paper medical records so that in the future, to support continuity of care needs, key documents would be retrievable through the EHR system. However, the health care system lacked the level of internal IT and health information services staff resources required to manage the implementation of hardware and software to handle the actual paper conversion process, so these aspects of the project were outsourced.

Discuss the following:

• As the health care system prepares to select an outsource company as its vendor for this project, what types of information should you gather from each vendor under consideration?
• What are the potential benefits that a health care system could gain from implementing a document imaging and management project prior to implementing an EHR system?

Part 8

As the manager of CTU Health Care Systems, you have done your research on three vendors to which you would like to outsource the implementation of the electronic health records (EHRs) for the clinics. As the manager, you have a number of critical decisions regarding the electronic medical record systems. At first, you thought you could either implement the existing EHR system at the other acute care organization or implement an entirely new EHR in both facilities.

You met with your staff, and after researching several companies that offered both products and services, you have solicited request for proposals (RFPs) from the following three companies:

• ABC Systems Consulting, the leading company in health care systems integration services, refused to bid on the systems integration required for bringing the current EHR system into the other organization. This was because of the risks and time requirements for designing, implementing, and testing the large number of interfaces required and the required time line for the completion of the project as identified by the client.
• XYZ EHR Systems proposed that its new, recently redeveloped EHR be implemented in both facilities, which included a computerized physician order entry (CPOE) module, standardized drug interaction alert functionality, and customizable clinical alert functionality. It estimated that the merged entity would get a much better price than $50 million for purchasing this new system. Unfortunately, XYZ was unable to provide evidence of successful installation of its recently redeveloped EHR system at a similarly large delivery network or anywhere.
• QRS EHR Systems, a leading provider of EHR systems for large acute care facilities, proposed that its EHR be installed in both acute care organizations with a $50–60 million price tag. QRS included a CPOE module, standardized drug interaction alert functionality, as well as evidence-based clinical alert functionality. QRS also had a physician office EHR system with an embedded patient registration system; however, QRS has had minimal experience with integrating the physician office registration system with the acute care (hospital) registration system—an integration feature that was a priority for this project based on the client’s information technology (IT) strategic plan.

The stakes surrounding your recommendation to the chief information officer (CIO) and chief executive officer (CEO) could not be higher in terms of dollars and your career.

Discuss the following in your paper of 3-4 pages, not including title page and reference page:

• What pieces of information are the most critical for your decision on selecting the right vendor?
• What other options, if any, do you have?
• What are the critical success factors in the case?
• What are your recommendations to the CIO and CEO based on the RFPs that you received?

Part 9 (200-300 words)

Review and reflect on the knowledge you have gained from this course. Based on your review and reflection, write at least 200-300 words on the following:

• What were the most compelling topics learned in this course?
• How did participating in discussions help your understanding of the subject matter? Is anything still unclear that could be clarified?
• What approaches could have yielded additional valuable information?

Part 10 (3-5 pgs)

As the manager of the CTU Health Care information systems department, you are aware of the meaningful use core measure standards that all eligible professionals (EPs) and health care organizations (HCOs) must meet to receive monetary incentives set forth by the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act. To meet the HITECH meaningful use core measures, EPs and HCOs must implement certified electronic health records (EHRs) to gain incentives. To meet the criteria for meaningful use all EPs and HCOs must implement certified EHR.

Write a paper of 3-5 pages, not including the title page and reference page, that addresses the following:

• Discuss 2 key elements of certified EHRs, and discuss stage 1 meaningful use core objectives criteria as they relate to clinical applications.

The paper should include at least 2 reference to research sources, and all sources should be cited using APA format.