Evaluating Health IT

Answer

• Evaluation of the PACS Initiative at McKinly

  Brief Project Description

  Hospitals usually develop and maintain long term user engagements to attain long term benefits of the HIT systems. To successfully implement a Health Information System, three factors have to be factored in; human, organization and technology. At McKinly, the adoption and implementation of the Picture Archive and Communication System (PACS) is aimed at promoting patient care, enhancing efficiency and cost reduction. To evaluate how the human, organization and technology are interrelated in the adoption of the PACS system, the Human, Organization and Technology-fit (HOT-Fit) framework by Yusof et al. (2006) is necessary. This paper looks at the use of the HOT-Fit framework to evaluate the PACS system at McKinly.

  Project Goals

  The implementation of this project is aimed at evaluating how the PACS system can seamlessly integrate into the role it is intended to attain at McKinly, and its overall interoperability. Some of the stakeholders that are essential for the implementation of this evaluation strategy is the whole medical Imaging team and the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) division. To be seen as successful, the project has to demonstrate that it can lead to better promotion of patient care, enhanced efficiency and reduction in costs. The major net benefit that this evaluation project would seek to further is the cost reduction

  Evaluation Goals

  This evaluation is done to find out the workability and efficiency of the PACS system, besides looking at its ability to help reduce costs for the radiology department at McKinly. The Medical Imaging Team and the Magnetic Resonance Imaging Teams are my most immediate audience. The evaluation report is to be prepared for these immediate stakeholders. The management is also another vital stakeholder in this regard. The evaluation will be used to attempt to convince late adopters and share lessons that may need improvement (Gurgen Erdogan & Tarhan, 2018). It would also be a vital part of justifying the costs spent not only on the quality improvement PACS but also on the evaluation project itself. There are no wider, external goals for the project.

  Choose Evaluation Metrics

  For the net benefits identified, the HOT-Fit dimensions would have to measure the ability of the PACS initiative to reduce costs by improving the efficiency of the various departments. The first dimension is the systems quality (Erlirianto et al. 2015). This means that improved quality would help to lower costs of operation. Information quality is the next dimension (Yusof et al. 2008). Here, we look at the way in which the improvement of information exchange through PACS has helped saved resources. Service Quality is the other dimension, and it assesses how PACS system in this case has improved the quality of service and thus helped save McKinly from needless losses. System Development is the other dimension, and it assesses how the development of the system has helped reduce operation costs. The next one is system use. This entails looking at how the use of PACS has helped reduce costs. User satisfaction is the other dimension and here we consider how the use of PACS has met the user taste and preferences, helping to save losses (Kilsdonk et al. 2011). Finally, there is organizational impact where we look at how the system has changed the organizational structure and whether this change has worked to help the organization save resources.

  Dimension	What to measure
  System quality	System to provide better imaging pictures and storage
  Information quality	Improved communication between the various departments at McKinly
  Service quality	Simpler taking, keeping and retrieval of xray images
  System development	Ease of improvement and development
  System use	Training and understanding of system by all concerned
  User satisfaction	Users can identify improvement and are satisfied with its use
  Organizational impact	Stronger organizational impact

   

  Quantitative or Qualitative Metrics/Data

  The data I would collect for the sake of this evaluative project would mostly be qualitative. The reason why I would prefer qualitative data would be first for the sake of simplicity. The introduction of the PACS system brings to McKinly something alien and what may be perceived by many within the organization as more complicated. Qualitative data would make it seem a lot simpler (Lewin et al. 2009). I would want my evaluation to be accessible to the whole team and management by simplifying it as much as possible so that PACS may be improved where necessary. This data would also enable the management to understand how users of the new initiative use and feel about the system. I would collect data on perceptions of the users, noting any difficulties they faced and asking for possible suggestions for improvement they would make.

  I would also include quantitative data. In line with my objectives, I would want to find out what the impacts of the PACS system has been on the overall costs of imaging at McKinly and whether or not any changes have been made so far. The data would also need to come from the users themselves, as I would need to find out how many are comfortable with PACS and how many are not, how many would want to see improvements and who would not and so on.

  Data Sources

  The data I would be collecting would come from the wide array of hospital data at McKinly kept either electronically or manually and that have to do with the new PACS system. This would be a good way of accessing qualitative data. The data would be the ones detailing the implementation of PACS at McKinly and the difficulties that the digital imaging teams have met in implementing the project. Also, it would be data detailing the manner of organizational change that has been seen at McKinly and how it has influenced the efficiency and costs of operation.

  I would also tap on the Human Resource questionnaires that periodically seek to find answer about the operability of the PACS system and the difficulties faced by the staff at the facility in accessing and using the system. It would also be prudent to look at data that asks about the efficiency and improvement that the PACS system has made at the facility and how it improves the quality of service. Finally, I would need to see the billing data so that I may be able to determine the impact of the new initiative on the overall costs which is a core objective of the project itself.