Health Informatics Bacon County Hospital and Health

Health Informatics

Bacon County Hospital and Health System offers a variety of services to patients, including Emergency, Long-term care, Laboratory, X-ray, ICU, various therapies, Obstetrics, surgery, Pharmacy, and Patient Education (Bacon County Hospital and Health System). The health informatics system has various inputs of patient information, including payment and insurance information, diagnosis, health status, reactions to various treatments, tests performed, medications, allergies, etc. Information is input from staff members from various departments. The information is then processed for various outputs to stakeholders, such as physicians, patients, and institutional leaders.

The health informatics system is designed to capture coded demographics, co-morbidity, treatment, and outcomes data into a centralized data repository, or database, measure concordance of treatment given to care guidelines, or benchmarks, analyze associations between patient outcomes and patient demographics, treatment factors, and facility characteristics (Niland, 2006). The system follows a client-server model with web interfaces over a robust security framework that includes role-based data access, data encryption, and digital certification. Staffs are only allowed to access the information required to perform their individual jobs with usernames and passwords. The system integrates organizational culture, data structure, and knowledge management processes in a socio-technical system. "Government regulations, accrediting standards, and conventions of practice form the parameters of policies and procedures" (Payne, 2009).

The inputs into the system include data, types and depth, structural, characteristics of caregivers and institution, processes, encounters between patients and physicians, outcomes, patient health status, moderators, whom and circumstances information is obtained, and uses the quantitative data approach. The people perspective of input includes institutional leaders, for strategic intent, domain experts, to define data elements, and Health Information Managers, provide accurate data collection and coding. The procedural perspective of input includes the data dictionary, or the data element selection, and external standards.

The storage, or database, measures and assesses information. Integration and aggregation transforms the data and loads it to the repository, or database (Layman, 2009). The control measures include naming of information, accuracy metrics to ensure accuracy and include measures such as cross field logic checks, longitudinal data integrity assessments, and audit results, completeness metrics to avoid information gaps, metadata synchronization to ensure continual alignment, and alerts for errors and security. The processing includes descriptive statistics and benchmarks.

The outcomes include patient summary reports, test results, reports for physicians, statistical information for Health Information Managers and institutional leaders. The outcomes are reports for various stakeholders, depending on their position and authority with the information. Outcomes also include information for accreditation agencies and regulatory agencies for compliance issues.