Information Technology Change Management in Home Health

Information Technology Change Management in Home Health Care

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Implementing Information Technology Change in a Health Care Facility

There is a shift from the traditional institutionalized health care provision to home-based care provision. The shift comes amid increasing cases of chronic and terminal diseases that require constant monitoring and timely diagnosis for quick recovery. In the health care arena, the need to uphold quality of care to patients and their immediate family members is paramount. This need can fail to be met if the global advancements in management system that facilitate service delivery are not embraced. The potential to improve home health care lies in the ability to embrace information technology (IT) advancements to ease in service provision (Cohen D., 2005).

In the organization it has been observed that service provision to home-based patients is inefficient. There is lack of proper record management and the time taken to attend to patients does not reflect the desirable quality of care. Access to patient records is possible only through accessing files in the hospital an aspect that slows down service delivery mechanisms. Patients' recovery time is also compromised by the slow pace of diagnosis and treatment delivery. Physician and clinical nurses tend to spend most of their time on road trying to collect and relay information for appropriate responses.

It is proposed that an IT patient record management system should be developed and implemented to resolve the observed inefficiencies. The IT-based system will allow information on patients to be relayed easily without necessitating visits to a healthcare facility. Additionally Nurses and physicians can easily receive insights about patients' development through the system and relay treatment and prescriptions to the patients. Consultations between medical practitioners on patient case can also be made possible to increase the speed and accuracy in treatment. The system will also contribute to the overall treatment procedures by provide easy reference points for future cases. The IT

Organizational and Individual Barriers

Apart from observed potential that IT record management system can do to improve home health care delivery some challenges waylay its implementation. First is the challenge to the health care institution to align management and the available resource in accommodating the new system. The management will come to terms with the need to formulate policy in controlling the input, access and use of the record information. Strategies in implementing the system will require formulation of a payment system that complements and accommodates the new paradigm.

Secondly management structures within the institution are highly concerned with cost containment in its operation. Managers and policy makers will have a difficulty in allocating funds given the policy followed in allocation of funds to expenditure items. A change of the organization's information management system will call for an overhaul of the current system. This will necessitate formulation of policies to facilitate implementation of the system and training to the potential users. Currently there are no policies to accommodate funding of development aspects of the institution management system.

Thirdly the security of information shared through the system comes as a necessity. The organization has over the years used secured cabinet files as the sole means of ensuring safety to patient information. The IT-based record management system comes as a new ideology that the organization has not previously attempted. The organization's need to shift from office cabinet to virtual information storage and access will be an uphill task. This is especially so where the patient information confidentiality needs are trusted on automated systems.

Fourth, changing the mind set of staff, patients and management on the efficiency the IT record management system stands to offer is evident. As Kotter (2002) observes change within an organization will always receive negative feelings. Humans according to Kotter (2002)observe have resentments to anything that threatens to change the status quo. The challenge in this case is to turn the negative resentment from the human resource to positive feeling that encourage proactive enthusiasm.

Change Facilitating Factors

The need for change within an institution is inevitable where there are sufficient evidence that change will set in new paradigms for growth and sustainability (Cohen D., 2005). The organization has over the years experienced an upsurge in the number of patient preferring home-based care. The institution has embraces this need by committing more staff to home-based care. The employees and consultants have also embraced the workings in the system of home-based care. The notion that a new system is coming in will only touch one aspect. That is the record management aspect. The institution has in place a Tele-medicine system that supports diagnosis and treatment of patients. This system lessens the advocacy need to staff and patients on the It-based record keeping system.

Nurses and physicians have numerously faced up with the challenge of record access. The convenience that the IT-based record keeping mechanism stands to offer will come in as the much needed measure to reduce the hustle in practicing medicine staff. Additional to this the advances in information technology have over the years been seen as the ultimate measure to lessen the workload at work. This will greatly increase the staff motivation to embrace the new system. Policies and regulation structure in the information technology sectors have been developed for a long period and have also incorporated the security features. This serves as an ideal to propagate the implementation of the system with no fear of compromising patient information confidentiality needs.

Theoretical model for change - (Kotter's (1996) Strategic Eight-Step Model

Kotter model for organization change depicts a non-linear 8 step approach that includes; Increase urgency, Build guiding teams, Get the vision right, Communicate for buy-in, Enable action, Create short-term wins, Don't let up and Make it stick (Kotter, 2002). In Kotter's model these steps are organized in three phases distinct in their own composition. Phase one -- climate setting -- encompasses the first three steps. Phase two -- engagement and enabling -- comprises 4th, 5th and 6th steps. The final two step are in the third phase -- applying and sustaining the change (Kotter, 2002).