HealthLine General Hospital

HealthLine General Hospital
Author Name
Institutional Affiliation

HealthLine General Hospital: EHRs
Description
HealthLine General Hospital (HGH) is a fictitious healthcare organization which has been in operation since 2012. Based in California, HGH has been offering first-rate medical care services to its dedicated patient base in California and neighboring counties. HGH offers treatments across a broad continuum of medical specialties. Currently, HGH has a group of 100 employees and can serve at least 500 patients per day. Since its inception in 2012, HGH has been receiving patients of all age groups, with a varied range of illnesses and statuses.
Need for a system
Quality patient-centered care has been the core objective of HGH. However, due to lack of an appropriate system to handle and facilitate easy, controlled access to patient information, achieving this objective has been difficult. HGH is still using the traditional method of keeping patient data in papers, books, and files. Given the high number of patients the facility, this traditional system poses a lot of challenges to HGH: slow retrieval of data, the vulnerability of patient information, and poor patient-physician coordination among other limitations. HDH needs an Electronic Health Record (EHR) system to help it manage patient information and improve its healthcare delivery. According to Tang (2003), EHR is a real-time patient health record system that facilitates instant and secure access to patient information.

This system contains patients’ health histories, treatment plans, diagnoses, laboratory tests and outcomes, allergies, immunization dates, and radiology images among other pertinent data.
Goals and objectives
To improve the quality of care within the organization
To have a functioning EHR system by January 1st, 2019
To minimize the cost of implementation
Budget, Decision, and Timeline
The cost of implementing HER systems in an average four-physician acute care practice, working within a wide network is approximately $162,000 plus $86,000 in maintenance cost in the first year (Tang, 2003).). Considering this fact, HGH’s budget for the implementation of the EHR project is $250,000. John Edison will be the project manager. The project team will include Charles Godwin (project coordinator), Alex Lumbart (implementation manager), Steve Lwams (project communication officer), and Ian Bright (stage manager). Due lack of the required technical skills to build in-house EHRs, HGH plans to acquire EHRs from outside and implement the entire project by January 1st, 2019.
Reference
Tang, P. C. (2003). Key capabilities of an electronic health record system. Washington, DC, Institute of Medicine of the National Academies.