Executive Summary for a Project Proposal

¶ … healthcare industry is undergoing fundamental change. Inaction of the affordable care act rapidly increases the insured population in America. Not only have the number of insured individuals increased, but the varied of these individuals has also grown. Now more minorities and younger individuals are now insured. Due in part to these changing demographics, industry aspects has been altered. Customers are now expecting highly quality of care. They are also demand a much larger variety of treatment options.

The industry must therefore adapt their practices to better coalesce around these changing ideals. Once manner in which to do so is medical reconciliation. As noted earlier, customers now expect a much higher degree of care for their ailments. On manner in which to do so is through the prevention of adverse drug events. Adverse drug events (ADEs) are a top priority for many healthcare firms. Preventing harm has many societal, economic and reputational benefits.

Now that more people are insured, the consumer now has the power of choice in regards to treatment. Having a firm that makes very few mistakes and has a strong reputation can lead to increased revenues. It also provides the firm with more notoriety and prestige, leading to further increases in revenue. Medical reconciliation helps immensely in this regard. In short, medical reconciliation allows firms to create the most accurate list possible of patient treatments. Information includes drug names, frequency, and amounts.

This list is then compared with the physician's notes to insure accuracy. In its simplest form, medical reconciliation is a formal partnership that ensures accuracy and complete medical information. Data collection tools vary between healthcare firms. The primary tools are listed below: 1) Outcome Assessment Information Set (OASIS) 2) The Home Health Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers Survey (HHCAHPS) 3) Organizational Performance Improvement Each has a distinct set of strengths and weakness that will be outlined briefly. Irrespective of their differences, each offers healthcare firms a means to better prevent costly reporting errors.

OASIS is a nationwide data collection toll that focuses on patient outcome. It collects a variety of data including hospital transfers, discharge from home health hospitals, and admission into these hospitals. HHCAHPS is also a nationwide data collection tool. However, its focus is on customer and patient satisfaction. It handles mostly third party information. Finally, Organizational Performance Improvement in an internal application that has a multi-directional focus. As an internal application, the process improvement team generally manages it.

The application focuses on timeliness of care, effectiveness of care, accessibility, and other internal aspects of healthcare firms. Milestones are an important part of patient safety plans and eventual implementation. The first quality milestone is an overall improvement in the quality of care for all patients. This will be measured through customer service surveys, as well has treatment outcomes over an extended period of time. The project must see at a least a 5% improvement in overall customer's satisfaction and quality scores in order to be successful.

Second, the firm should achieve savings that justify the expenditures on technology implementation. This will be measured by returns on invested capital. All investments in the business should be justified with an adequate return on the initial investment. The timeframe of this project was from January 2016, review and re-evaluate in April 2016 and again in July 2016. Implement this project on August 1, 2016. Essentially the investment should pay off with 5 years of this timeframe. The role of IT has changes, as applications have become more powerful.

Technology is now a very crucial aspect to the overall success of a healthcare facility. First, technology provides efficiency gains and synergies that would not have otherwise been achieved. Employees can now do more work, in less time through the adoption of technology. Technology when applied right, can also be additive. Synergies through linked processes can also be highly effective. This is particularly true for acquisitions.

Technologies, when applied over a large base can achieve "economies of scale." Essentially, the per unit cost of delivering service will decline as the company gets larger. IT also has a cost savings role. It allows firms to become more competitive with each other. Ultimately, the consumer wins through improved processes and services. Benchmarking is critical to ascertain proper goals and objectives. Recent evidence correlates meaningful outcomes related to patient safety with certain types of medication reconciliation practices.

These practices must be properly benchmarked against the current proposal to see the solution is adequate. In order to perform medication reconciliation in a way that affects patient safety across transitions in healthcare, a significant investment of resources will likely be required. As a result, a proper benchmark is needed to justify this investment. Recently, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) published a toolkit intended to guide practitioners and institutions in improving their medication reconciliation processes. This provides a strong starting position to properly benchmark the project.

Another external benchmark would be other companies who use similar technology in a similar fashion. Executives could see how these firms are preforming relative to their own. This is particular true, if the firm is publically traded and has financial information within the public domain. The key players in this project are very diverse in their.