Health information management using optical storage technology: case studies.

Abstract

All the health care facilities examined in the case studies addressed several important organizational issues before and during the installation of their systems. All the facilities examined employee commitment. The prudent managers considered how easily their employees adapt to changes in their jobs and work environment. They considered how enthusiastic cooperation can be fostered in the creation of a liberated and reengineered office. This was determined not only by each individual's reaction to change, but also by the health care facility's track record with other system installations. For example, document image, diagnostic image, and coded data processing systems allow the integration of divergent health care information systems within complex institutions. Unfortunately, many institutions are currently struggling with how to create an information management architecture that will integrate their mature systems, such as their patient care and financial systems. Information managers must realize that if optical storage technology-based systems are used in a strategic and planned fashion, these systems can act as focal points for systems integration, not as promises to further confuse the issue. Another issue that needed attention in all the examples was the work environment. The managers considered how the work environment was going to affect the ability to integrate optical image and data systems into the institution. For example, many of these medical centers have created alliances with clinics, HMOs, and large corporate users of medical services. This created a demand for all or part of the health information outside the confines of the original institution. Since the work environment is composed of a handful of factors such as merged medical services, as many work environment factors as possible were addressed before application of the optical storage technology solution in the institutions. And finally, the third critical issue was the organization of work. "Organizations that understand their business processes are having no trouble whatsoever justifying the cost of optical storage-based information management systems," said Thornton May, director of imaging research at Nolan Norton Institute. "It is only confusing to organizations that do not have a feel for what is happening in the flow of work in the company. If an organization has on-line performance measurements with regard to time, cost, quality, error rates, and customer service, the move to optical image and data management technology is a no-brainer."(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)