COMPETENCIES

744.3.1 : Information Management

The graduate evaluates information management systems that support timely, high-quality, patient-centered care.

744.3.2 : Leadership in Nursing Informatics

The graduate integrates knowledge of nursing initiatives, professional organizations, and leadership into strategies for enhancing nursing informatics.

744.3.3 : Health Information Systems

The graduate distinguishes between the critical and useful electronic data needed for effective decision support (clinical, financial and administrative outcomes) to provide high quality and efficient care.

744.3.4 : Information Security

The graduate evaluates the essential elements of safety, security, privacy, in an information management system or informatics project.

744.3.5 : Current and Future Technologies

The graduate evaluates the implications of current and emerging technologies for practice, research, education, and administration.

INTRODUCTION

Current and emerging technologies in healthcare provide nurses with the opportunity to improve patient outcomes through ever-increasing access to data and evidence. Information support systems affect decisions made at both the point of care and the organizational levels. Nurses who are prepared at the master’s level fill a key role in leading unit and organizational change that incorporates these emerging technologies to promote patient safety and enhance quality of care.

SCENARIO

You are an informatics nurse specialist working in a healthcare organization that is merging with another organization of comparable size. As a result of the merger, funds have been designated to offer services in a satellite facility. You are responsible to lead the project committee in implementing a health information system (HIS) that meets current HITECH and HIPAA Security and Privacy regulatory requirements.

REQUIREMENTS

Your submission must be your original work. No more than a combined total of 30% of the submission and no more than a 10% match to any one individual source can be directly quoted or closely paraphrased from sources, even if cited correctly. An originality report is provided when you submit your task that can be used as a guide.

Professional Communications is a required aspect to pass this task. Completion of a spell check and grammar check prior to submitting your final work is strongly recommended.

You must use the rubric to direct the creation of your submission because it provides detailed criteria that will be used to evaluate your work. Each requirement below may be evaluated by more than one rubric aspect. The rubric aspect titles may contain hyperlinks to relevant portions of the course.

A. Discuss and analyze health information systems by doing the following:

1. Summarize advantages and disadvantages of a system, including the following:

• usability

• interoperability

• scalability

• compatibility

2. Describe how a system will affect patient care and documentation.

3. Explain how using a system to access information will affect the quality and delivery of nursing care and patient outcomes.

B. Discuss how a system will benefit the organization by addressing the following:

1. Provide two ways that quality improvement (QI) data collected from a system can lead to measurable improvement in health care services and the health status of targeted patient groups.

2. Explain how a system will meet HITECH and HIPAA security standards and regulations, including the following:

• data storage integrity

• data backup and recovery

3. Explain how a system will protect patient privacy.

4. Describe how adopting a system will improve organizational efficiency and productivity by addressing the following factors to the organization, including the following:

• standardizing documentation

• reducing waste

• increasing productivity

• human and capital resource

C. Describe four essential stakeholder roles needed to form an interdisciplinary team to work on a system implementation, including the following:

• each team member’s title in the organization

• each team member’s role in the implementation of the health information system

• each team member’s expertise and how it contributes to the success of the project

D. Discuss your plan for evaluating the success of the implementation of a system by incorporating two professional organization standards.

E. Acknowledge sources, using in-text citations and references, for content that is quoted, paraphrased, or summarized.