Role of Health Information System in Patient Safety and Care Quality

This report comprehensively examines the crucial role of Health Information Systems (HIS) in promoting patient safety and enhancing the quality of care within healthcare organizations. It begins by defining patient safety, care quality, and HIS, alongside an overview of relevant healthcare laws and policies. The assessment section delves into how HIS supports patient safety goals, facilitates adherence to health policies, and contributes to overall care quality. The report evaluates the advantages of HIS, such as improved communication, medication safety, and data tracking, while also acknowledging limitations like cost constraints and cyber security threats. Furthermore, it offers recommendations for improvement, including addressing uneven HIS distribution, enhancing training, and strengthening data security measures. The conclusion emphasizes the significant impact of HIS on healthcare delivery, highlighting its pivotal role in supporting health services and improving patient outcomes.

PATIENT SAFETY AND CARE QUALITY
ROLE OF HEALTH INFORMATION SYSTEM IN HEALTHCARE ORGANIZATIONS

Content Layout
 Introduction
 What is patient safety and care quality?
 What is health information system?
 What are the various laws and policies of health care?
 Assessment
 How health information system help the organization meet patient safety goals?
 How organizations excel in patient care following the related health policies?
 Is health information system enough to meet quality patient safety and care?
 Recommendations
 What are the measures to improve quality of health care( if any)?
 Conclusion
 Reference list

Introduction
Patient safety in one word could be defined as the prevention of any kind of harm to patients.
Nursing is the key to quality improvement for patient safety and care quality (Barbazza & Tello,
2014). Patient care quality delivery system emphasis on
• prevention of errors
• learning from previously occurred errors if any
• the safety culture involving health professionals, patients and healthcare organizations.
A number of patient safety practices help diminishing safety errors and improve health care process
in health organizations such as
• Use of simulators
• Bar coding system
• Computerized order entry and
• Crew resource management.

Introduction
Health Information System
Health Information System is a system designed to manage data related to healthcare services. The
system collects, stores and manages a patient’s electronic data records in pace with the operational
management system of the organization (Braithwaite, Marks & Taylor, 2014). Health care policies are
also followed while developing a Health Information System.
The health planners and healthcare decision makers rely on a number of information that need to be
collected before implementation of the Health Information System such as,
• Socio-economic, genetic, behavioral and environmental health determinant factors
• Health care policies, infrastructure, facilities and equipment, financial costs, and human resources
• Outputs of health system including quality, availability and accessibility of information and lowering
health risks
• Health outcomes including mortality, disease outbreak, morbidity, disability, health status and well
being.
• Other health inequities such as reliability, usability and comprehensive data collection methods.

Introduction
The Health information System(HIS) is developed by the Health Information Technology
(Ingebrigtsen, et.al, 2014). A number of tools are available for supporting the core functions of
HIS such as,
• Electronic Medical Record (EMR)
• Electronic Health Record ( EHR)
• Practice Management Software tools
• Master Patient Index
• Patient Portals
• Remote Patient Monitoring (RPM) and
• Clinical Decision Support System(CDSS)
• Telemedicine
• Smart pumps and
• E-prescription

Introduction
The HIS has a number of advantages over the traditional method of data management. The major benefits
include,
• Data analytics
• Collaborative care
• Cost control
• Population Health Management
The health care industry is most vulnerable to cybercrimes and data misuse (Jones, Perry & Shekelle, 2014). To
control security issues the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) has provided some
regulatory measures. The best practices supporting Health Information System in health organizations include,
• Train employees
• Encrypt data
• Back up data
• Monitor usage
• Buy insurance
• Access vendor vulnerability and
• Employ multifactor authentication

Introduction
A number of regulatory activities are formulated in order to protect patient health information.
The healthcare providers use patient information to impart best quality treatment to them
(Nguyen, Bellucci & Nguyen, 2014). Protected Health Information is secured by a number of
national and state laws. Some important laws include,
• Privacy Act of 1974
• The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare organizations (JCAHO)
• The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) of
2009
• The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996
• The Affordable Care Act of 2010
• The Food and Drug Administration Safety and Innovation Act (FDASIC) of 2012
• The Medicare Access and CHIP (Children’s Health Insurance Program) Reauthorization Act
(MACRA) of 2015 and
• 21st Century Cures Act of 2016

Assessment

Assessment
The HIS architecture provides a complete framework of patient safety and quality care. From the first
stage of coming to the hospital to the final stage of leaving the hospital all are collaborated under HIS
(Okuyama, Wagner & Bijnen, 2014). Health Information System incorporates intensive care units,
operation theatres, emergency wards, critical care, discharge lounges and others.
HIS provides quality health care by,
• Communication facilitation
• Improved medication safety
• Improved tracking and information
Recording
• Promoting quality care by adherence
To health guidelines and policies

Assessment
Health policies are devised for imparting better quality of service and care to patient parties. Decision
making on part of both organizational and individual patient aspect becomes easier which help in
improved and timely care providence.
Improved patient care is supported by HIS by the following measures,
• Right decision by the right people at the right time
• Providence of multidimensional care
• More compact mode of treatment and real time accessibility.
The nurses are imparted proper training of the various tools of healthcare so that any misuse of data is
avoided to the extent possible. Also they need to abide by the organizational policies related to health
care and need to prioritize patient safety and quality care the most (Ross, Stevenson & Murray, 2016).
The HIS tools are incorporated wisely so that safety and security of every patient is most emphasized.

Assessment
Though HIS has many advantages over traditional practice of patient safety it has a number of
limitations and need to be considered by every health organization.
 Cost constraint
 Learning curve and resistant to change
 Information integration
 System upgrade and improvements
 Data threats and cyber crimes
 Change in policies and health laws
 Infrastructural constraints and
 Resource constraints

Recommendations
Though HIS has changed the way of patient safety and quality care but still rooms for improvement
exist. Centralized data integration help in timely care providence but at the same time data are at
higher risk of leakage threats which is against the patient privacy act (Waterson, 2014). Major
concerning areas include,
• The spread of HIS is uneven as the rural areas are still struggling for better health services. So
distribution of HIS need to be highlighted so that both rural and urban parts of the country is
benefitted by HIS.
• The framework is quite complex and training is not enough for the health care providers to use
them effectively.
• Cyber threats is been increasing considerably and every online data warehouse is vulnerable to
such crimes.
• The framework of HIS is not flexible to adopt and upgrade to health policy changes over time.
They need to be upgraded and will require extra effort. That is every time policy changes the HIS
framework need to be upgraded which is not an easy task always.