You are a Chief Operating Officer for one of the hospitals for an integrated health system that operates hospitals, clinics, health centers NuWave Health System. You have been appointed to lead a new working group for the system. The group is tasked with improving the governance and management of health information technology

The NuWave Health System has recently adopted new strategic initiatives around transitioning from the acute sick care” model of healthcare to one focused on wellness and integrated care delivery in the new wellness” healthcare model.

New business objectives underway include the addition of a home health capability, better outreach to the community, better integration with the physician community, and new and more intimate relationship with the patient community. As always, several continuing business objectives exist to proved best quality of care at most effective cost.

A recent HIPAA violation resulted in the inadvertent release of information that caused the system a significant penalty and bad publicity in the community. It involved personnel sharing passwords and accessing unauthorized information.

The system has an EHR and automated systems for their ancillary (radiology, laboratory, pharmacy) departments and is underway for updates across the board to meet requirements for Meaningful Use within the hospitals but have different systems in their ambulatory facilities.

The system has standardized automated applications in the business side within revenue cycle, finance, supply chain and communication applications.

THE CHALLENGE

You want to make your best contribution to the working group that currently consists of the CIO, IT department directors, the CFO and nursing representatives. Prior to the first meeting, each member is asked to bring input as to suggestions on topics, initiatives, approaches, etc Based on some preliminary communication and your own experience in operations, you know not all the working group members are technology or information management experts, that the organization has previously treated past information technology projects as strictly IT projects”

ASSIGNMENT:

-Using the information from your reading, please cover the following points in your preparation for this meeting

-Based on your reading, identify some keys for success, describe and tell why they are important

 In framing your working group’s agenda, what are some of the major areas you will need to address in the coming future meetings

-Imagine an application technology that might be useful in helping achieve their new strategies