Comprehensive Report: Partners Healthcare Systems (PHS) and IT Systems

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Partners Healthcare Systems (PHS), focusing on the implementation and impact of Longitudinal Medical Records (LMR) and Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE). The report explores the benefits of these systems in improving healthcare delivery, including enhanced access to patient clinical data and reduced medical errors. It addresses the barriers faced during implementation, such as lack of financial incentives, privacy concerns, and physician resistance, and details the strategies employed by PHS to overcome these challenges, including medical reimbursements and training programs. The report also examines the architecture of the Health Information System (IS) within PHS, highlighting the role of executive management, business alignment, and enterprise-level approaches. Furthermore, it discusses the research and development initiatives undertaken by PHS, including the establishment of clinical development and research teams, IT leadership centers, and clinical analysis teams, to assess the effectiveness of the implemented systems. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of these interventions in improving healthcare outcomes and fostering a knowledge management process within PHS.

Running head: PARTNERS HEALTH CARE SYSTEMS (PHS)
PARTNERS HEALTH CARE SYSTEMS AND HEALTHCARE MANAGEMENT
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

1PARTNERS HEALTH CARE SYSTEMS (PHS)
Table of Contents
Answer 1..............................................................................................................................2
Answer 2..............................................................................................................................2
Answer 3..............................................................................................................................3
Answer 4..............................................................................................................................4
References............................................................................................................................6

2PARTNERS HEALTH CARE SYSTEMS (PHS)
Answer 1
Longitudinal Medical Record (LMR) is a medical record system that records a
comprehensive summary of the clinical data of every patient, their experience while receiving
healthcare and past medical history. Whereas, the Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE)
is a system in which, the medical professional place orders or prescribe medication electronically
rather than on paper (Ash et al., 2012). These two systems helped to introduce a wide positive
shift in the healthcare system.
Before the inception of LMR and CPOE, the nature of the healthcare system was
uncertain. Doctors did not knew about the medical history of the patient, past treatments and
medications. The economic structure was also very complex. Physicians used to provide
prescriptions with poor handwriting and mistakes and therefore the patient sometimes cannot
access those medication of therapies prescribed. Hence, the healthcare system needed to be
reformed to balance the cost and quality of healthcare. After implementation of LMR and CPOE,
healthcare system was changed completely. The physician was able to access the clinical data of
the patient as the record was maintained by software. CPOE enabled the physicians to lessen
their errors and help them to maintain easy clinical workflow (Varghese et al., 2016).
These advantages helped the LMR and CPOE system to change the core healthcare
delivery business.
Answer 2
Introduction LMR and CPOE in the marked as medical reform in the history of
healthcare, however, despite of the potential advantages of these services, its implementation had

3PARTNERS HEALTH CARE SYSTEMS (PHS)
to face restrictions and barriers from the entire healthcare world (Wright & Bates, 2014). Some
of the potential barriers are as follows:
 The prime barrier to implement these systems was lack of knowledge about cost-
benefit analysis or financial reimbursement.
 Healthcare professions were concerned about their privacy and confidentiality
 Professionals lack a trained work force to manage these clinical interventions,
they also did not know about health information data standards.
 Physicians were unwilling to adapt to such changes and were not interested to
write prescriptions electronically rather than on paper.
To overcome these barriers founders of Partners Healthcare Systems (PHS)
 Arranged medical reimbursements from medical insurance companies and let the
physicians to implement this IT intervention for the ease of their work. The doctors got
90 percent of insurance before introduction of this technology and after successful
implementation, the rest of the money was given to run the process (Wright & Bates,
2014).
 Proper training session and workshops were arranged for physicians and their supporting
staff to be familiar with the process.
This way the leadership was able to overcome the potential barrier to implement PHS system.
Answer 3
Health Information System (IS) is defined as a system having four core functions in
healthcare: data generation, compilation, analysis and further communication. It allows the

4PARTNERS HEALTH CARE SYSTEMS (PHS)
healthcare professionals to collect data from the database, analyze the quality, timeline and
relevance and use those data for decision-making (Laudon & Laudon, 2016).
The IS system is present from the inception of the PHS system and the architecture of this
system includes a stable executive management, the entire team is focused to achieve a common
goal, alignment of business within IT by placing executive level workers within the prime
business units and development and maintenance of enterprise –level approach. These
architectural interventions of IS system helped them to serve more than 80,000 end users and
82,000 computers running on their network.
Stability in the executive management as the first positive thing happened for
implementation of successful PHS system. The first chief information officer (CIO) John Glaser
and his Deputy CIO, Mary Finley formed a team that focused mainly on the planning, research
and staffing of the IS department. As the IS system had business offices in 18 different locations,
each unit has an integrated customer facing CIO, to support more than 6000 general physicians
and healthcare professional.
This way the architecture of IS unit helped the PHS to achieve success.
Answer 4
The Information system was determined to carry out research and development (R&D) in
the process and to implement that the Chief Information officer (CIO) John Glaser set up an
organizational unit to assess the IT enablement of partners healthcare business processes
(Laudon & Laudon, 2016). They were divided into four parts:
 To address the clinical development and infrastructure, clinical research and
development team was formed.

5PARTNERS HEALTH CARE SYSTEMS (PHS)
 To explore the return on the investment of purchasing LMR or CPOE systems, IT
leadership center was created.
 A center for health connection was formed to identify how development in
telecommunication and IT can help to transform healthcare process.
 A clinical and quality analysis team was formed to assess the impact of CPOE and
LMR on clinical healthcare system.
These R&D interventions was required to assess the positive or negative results of
implementation of EMR system in healthcare.
These intervention centers contribute to the initial successor to the ongoing value of the
LMR/CPOE investment.
 It enables a knowledge management process that help to derive information
from observable outcomes.
 It creates a decision support process, and strengthen the decision with facts
and clinical data surveys using entire PHS database. Hereby, lowering the
chance of mistakes and enabling positive outcomes.

6PARTNERS HEALTH CARE SYSTEMS (PHS)
References
Ash, J. S., Sittig, D. F., Guappone, K. P., Dykstra, R. H., Richardson, J., Wright, A., ... &
Middleton, B. (2012). Recommended practices for computerized clinical decision support
and knowledge management in community settings: a qualitative study. BMC medical
informatics and decision making, 12(1), 6.
Laudon, K. C., & Laudon, J. P. (2016). Management information system. Pearson Education
India.
Varghese, P., Wright, A., Andersen, J. M., Yoshida, E. I., & Bates, D. W. (2016). Clinical
Decision Support: The Experience at Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Partners
HealthCare. In Clinical Decision Support Systems (pp. 227-244). Springer International
Publishing.
Wright, A., & Bates, D. W. (2014). Patients, Doctors, and Information Technology Clinical
Decision Support at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Partners HealthCare. Clinical
Decision Support: The Road to Broad Adoption, 189.