Business Case for the Implementation of IMS at St. Cuthbert’s.

Running head: BUSINESS CASE FOR THE IMPLEMENTATION OF IMS AT ST. CUTHBERT’S 1
The Business Case for Investing in IMS at St Cuthbert’s Healthcare.
Student’s name
Institution of affiliation

BUSINESS CASE FOR THE IMPLEMENTATION OF IMS AT ST. CUTHBERT’S 2
Requirements for a private hospital.
The business context of private hospitals.
Private hospitals play an important role in the Australian health market. In 2012, private
hospitals accounted for 44% of Australia’s hospitals, 33% of available beds and 39% of all
hospitalizations (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2014). In Australia, private hospital
costs are unsubsidized, unlike public hospitals. This locks out those lacking private insurance
and cannot pay using their own funds (Dixit & Sambasivan, 2018). Private hospitals operate in a
special social circumstance involving the disparities in health outcomes between urban and rural
regions and that between the Aboriginal and the rest of the Australian populations. The federal
government is seeking to address this by providing incentives for healthcare providers targeting
the above-mentioned populations (Mossialos & Wenzl, 2016).
Areas of breakdown and problems in the practice
Data from private hospitals in Australia is collected and analyzed through multiple reporting
channels. This poses a risk of data that is inconsistent with public hospital data. This makes it
difficult to analyze the relationship between financial and activity trends for assessing the
relative performance of private and public hospitals as required by the National Healthcare
Agreement (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2014).
Processes and services performed
Private hospitals complement public hospitals in the provision of healthcare services in
Australia. Services provided by private hospitals include medical hospitalizations (non-operation
room procedure), surgical, other care (involving non-operating room procedures like endoscopy),
childbirth admissions and specialist mental healthcare (Australian Institute of Health and
Welfare, 2014).

BUSINESS CASE FOR THE IMPLEMENTATION OF IMS AT ST. CUTHBERT’S 3
Key stakeholders, their needs and requirements.
The Australian private health system comprises of providers, consumers, funders and the
government (Global Access Partners, 2015). The providers are the private hospitals while the
consumers are the patients. Private hospitals receive their funding from insurers, the federal
government rebates on health insurance premiums, and from private patients (Mossialos &
Wenzl, 2016). The government plays the role of regulation through licensing controls.
IT solution.
Solution vendor and their background
St Cuthbert's Healthcare needs an IT solution that collects and analyzes patient information to
improve patient outcomes and meet stakeholder requirements. This paper proposes the Intelligent
Medical Software (IMS), developed by Meditab Software, Inc. Meditab is a healthcare solutions
provider founded in 1988 and has headquarters in Oakland, California (Meditab Software Inc.,
n.d.).
The architecture of IMS and its functions.
IMS is a hybrid integrated Electronic Health Records (EHR) and Practice Management solution.
The architecture is composed of IMS Clinical, IMS Manager, IMS CarePortal and IMS
OrderPlus. IMS Clinical is a powerful EHR that allows for easy documentation of patient visits.
It links pre-formatted symptoms of common conditions to their treatment. IMS Manager is
comprehensive practice management with tools for scheduling, patient tracking, billing, and
authorization and referrals. IMS CarePortal allows health care professionals to connect with the
patient. It allows the viewing lab results, paying bills, accessing educational information etc.
These can be accessed from the mobile app IMS Go. Lastly, IMS OrderPlus is an e-prescribing
tool for tracking dosing, drug interaction and refill history (Meditab Software Inc., n.d.).