7324MED Health Finance and Project Management- Monitoring System

Mount Pleasant hospital is a large public hospital with 10 wards. It provides public general surgical and orthopedic care as well as cancer, cardiac and general medical specialties. This hospital has access to rehabilitation services for patients who need ongoing services after their acute phase. The new functionality in particular addresses requirements for some of the key specialties including cardiology and respiratory. New pathways are being built into the EMR to aid with the management of stroke, cardiology and hip fracture in line with current guidelines. The new release of the software will expand the amount of information currently shared with polyclinics and community-based service programs. In order to ensure that the implementation of the new software release is a success, the hospital executive will provide funding for the project.

The mission of Mount Pleasant Hospital is to enhance the health and well-being of the community by providing high-quality medical care (Svejvig & Andersen, 2015). Mount Pleasant is committed to exceeding its patient's expectations so as to impact on its bottom-line.

Project Goals

• To improve decision making due to timely access of patient
• Reduce the patient's time of staying
• Reducing costs of manual health records
• Processes improvement in all departments
• Accessing patient history from remote locations
• Customer and employee satisfaction
• Reduce legal liability due to wrong health records

Project Objectives

• To install and configure components for an electronic health records system that will be used in all the hospital departments. Should be completed by January 2017 so that the hospital can go live.
• To provide a system that will enable the hospital to focus on excellent health records that will enable provision of quality healthcare.
• To develop alerts that will notify the service provider of any conflicts of records in the system
• Development of the necessary transmission of health records through system configuration, necessary interfaces, system alerts and printed forms.
• To implement new workflow processes that will ensure seamless record retrieval
• Ability to capture all the data needed as pertains to different health issues that the hospital handles, that is cardiology and respiratory, stroke management and hip fracture management.

Business Objectives

• To focus on quality healthcare by ensuring health records are efficiently managed
• To have a recall system that will remind patients of their hospital appointments
• To come up with a streamlined process that will minimize queuing time as records are being retrieved (Van Ongevalle, Huyse & Van Petegem, 2014).
• To increase the number of patients that can be seen while providing quality care

Financial Objectives

• To provide the hospital with a cost effective method of handling patient records
• To ensure profit growth of Mount Pleasant hospital through provision of seamless services

Performance, Cost, and Time Objectives

• To ensure the hospital has a seamless system that serves customers in a timely manner
• To ensure staff performance is efficient by providing a reliable system
• To reduce wastage of time by ensuring customers spend the least time possible being served in various departments.

Quality Objectives

• To ensure customer records are easily accessible and are used to give quality healthcare
• To have quality processes even during downtime 

Technical Objectives

• To have full technical support so as to ensure a robust system that will not let customers down
• To have a system that will preserve customer records for many years to come.

Project Scope Statement

The project intends to install an Electronic Health Records system at Mount Pleasant Hospital. The system will have various interfaces so as to deal with stroke patients, cardiology patients, and hip-fracture patients.

Project Management Objectives

• To come up with specific deliverables to efficiently manage the process through using the system productively. The Mount Pleasant project team will ensure:
  1. Project scope will be clearly defined
  2. Roles and responsibilities clearly defined
  3. Clear project goals
  4. Assumptions, risks, and constraints will be identified
  5. A clear schedule and milestones to be documented
• To have a clear communication plan so that all staff are aware of the project scope, schedule, responsibilities of each staff, targets and frequent update of status (Hatry, Newcomer & Wholey, 2015)

Included Scope

The scope of the project includes all activities and components needed to implement the electronic health records system at Mount Pleasant Hospital.

Excluded Scope

Work not included in this project is:

• Any additional functionality that may be planned after the EMR system is implemented
• Technological resources that will support the system after implementation
• Purchase and configuration of hardware & software that had not been included initially

Deliverables

The project manager will ensure that the following activities are completed through the project team:

• The project scope is defined and managed
• Managing and identifying project issues
• To identify the required numbers in terms of staff and roles of team members in the project
• Project management plan execution
• Risk identification and management
• Reporting of project status to relevant stakeholders
• Escalation of arising matters to hospital executives through project coordinator

Additional services will be given to Mount Pleasant Hospital to assist with the following processes:

• To compile the key requirements of installing the EMR
• To ensure clear communication between key members
• Provision of expertise need to install and configure the system
• To develop plans and protocols that will support the system
• To come up with training materials for the end user
• To develop user acceptance criteria

Mount Pleasant Hospital Responsibilities

The following activities will be included within the overall scope of the project:

• To secure the necessary hardware and software that will be required for implementation. These are servers, all infrastructure equipment, and peripheral devices.
• Ensuring hardware and software are installed
• To implement and update the interfaces that will be required to produce health
• Creation of health record profiles
  • Cardiology Patient Profile
  • Stroke Patient Profile
  • Hip Fracture Patient Profile
• To define requirements for the system by including data entry, interface, and processing requirements
• The configuration of the health records module to include patient order types:
  • Patient Medication
  • Radiology
  • Laboratory
  • Admissions
  • Emergency Department
  • Cath Lab
  • Discharge Orders
  • Respiratory
  • Therapy
  • Nursing Orders
  • Neurology
• Ensure there are processes to manage the security of the system. Lay down procedures on system access.

Vendor Responsibilities

• They will develop a work plan and schedule for required components
• To ensure timely delivery and installation of software
• To identify product dependencies
• To ensure training is done
• To ensure provision of expertise and recommendations as the installation is taking place in terms of
  • Delivery Timeline
  • Resources needed
  • Organizational structure
  • Associated Costs
  • Plan of Communication
  • Guidelines for testing
  • Technical Environment
• Provision of 24-hoursupport
• Coordinate interface development
• Coordinate demos for the system

Success Criteria

Critical Success Factors

• Support and participation of stakeholders
• Timely decisions by the project steering committee
• Timely Implementation of system installation and availability of vendor
• Well-defined and managed project scope
• End-user system training and acceptance
• Participation of physicians, nurses, and other support staff
• Timely approval of system content and processes
• Timely resource delivery and allocation to ensure successful implementation.

Project Assumptions

1. The project team will include resources from Mount Pleasant Hospital and Cerner Systems (Wyrozebski & Spalek,2014). The team will work together to coordinate all activities related to the project.
2. Mount Pleasant Hospital will have dedicated resources as outlined below to implement the EMR system.

• Project Manager from Mount Pleasant Hospital
• Physician Champion
• Nursing Champion
• Pharmacy Champion
• Clinical Champion
• Infrastructure Manager
• Super Users
• 20resources that will implement go-live support
• Interface Resources
• Help Desk
• Executive leadership
• Physician representatives

3. Mount Pleasant Hospital, through its I.T Department, will provide support to the EMR system once the project is implemented and closed (Schwalbe, 2015).
4. The project can only be completed if all parties complete assigned tasks on time.
5. There will be network infrastructure in place so support EMR implementation.
6. Mount Pleasant Hospital will provide all the required hardware and software.
7. The system will be available 24/7
8. Cerner Systems will have remote access to the server at Mount Pleasant Hospital
9. There will be regular reviewing of project status and this will be communicated to the project team through a communication plan
10. Mount Pleasant Hospital project team must ensure that all end-users attend required training.

Project Organization

 Project Activities and Phases

Vendor Budget

Other Costs

Risk Management Plan

Implementation techniques / Process steps for managing risks (Herroelen,2014)

1. The project team will identify and document risks and develop a mitigation plan.
2. Risks will be reviewed during project team meetings
3. The status of risks will be continuously communicated.
4. Any newly identified risks to be added during project team meetings.

Deliverables related to implementation

1. Status reporting
2. Risk worksheet

Human Resource Management Plan

 Implementation techniques / Process steps for project human resources

1. The project deliverables will be assigned to the staff members.
2. Tracking of resources will be done through regular reports (Van Ongevalle, Huyse & Van Petegem, 2014).
3. There will be the definition of roles and responsibilities.
4. Training needs analysis will be done 

Deliverables related to implementation

1. Project Work Plan
2. Roles Matrix
3. Staff training plan

Communication Management Plan

Implementation techniques / Process steps for communication management

1. Regular meetings will be conducted to update on status.
2. All meetings must have an agenda.
3. Minutes will be documented and stakeholders advised
4. Status reports will be implemented and cascaded to the staff
5. A marketing plan will be developed

Deliverables related to implementation

1. Status reports
2. Agendas, Minutes and Issue lists
3. Project Schedules
4. Team Meetings
5. Marketing Plans

Schedule / Time Management Plan

Implementation techniques / Process steps for schedule management

1. There will be individual project work plans and status reports to communicate progress
2. The scheduling of projects will be updated continuously.
3. Reviewing of schedule will happen regularly

Deliverables related to implementation

1. Status Reports
2. Updated Schedules

Quality Management Plan

Implementation techniques / Process steps for quality management

1. Measurement will be done against objectives to determine results
2. There will be a test strategy and test plans.
3. There will be signoffs at major checkpoints.

Deliverables related to implementation

1. Signoffs must be done
2. Testing plans for systems
3. Testing plans for acceptance

Change Control Plan

Implementation Technique

• There will be a change control register for managing change issues.
• There will be change champions in charge of various departments
• There will be clear communication on change processes

Deliverables related to implementation

• Change control register
• Training on Change Processes
• Change Champions 

Post-Implementation Operations 

EMR ongoing operations are:

• Review after implementation-To see whether the system is working well, there will be staff evaluation and customer feedback reports
• Monitoring and evaluation-The IT department of Mount Pleasant Hospital will provide full-time support for monitoring system performance, identifying discrepancies and coming up with ways of eliminating them (Flick, 2015)
• Continuous education and trainings-Staff will be continuously trained until they are comfortable in handling the system
• Full and all hour support from vendor-The vendor will provide full-time support in case there are downtime issues
• Measurement of success-Success will be measured by the growth rate after the new system is in place.

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