Data management systems overview and applications

¶ … Management Systems

What are the pros and cons of decision support systems in the overall business of running a health care organization?

Decision support systems have the potential of increasing the accuracy, alacrity or speed, and quality of decision making throughout healthcare organizations. If designed and implemented correctly they generate lower costs of service and treatment, while also increasing patient satisfaction and quality of care (Hickman, Smaltz, 2008). The benefits or pros of using decision support systems in running a healthcare organization include greater insight and intelligence into the total costs of treatment, administration and support for a healthcare facility or program. A second advantage is the ability these systems provide for taking all available analytics, Business Intelligence (BI) and historical data and align it to the specific roles and responsibilities of decision makers in the healthcare provider (Tan, Payton, 2010). Third, a decision support system can capture both tacit and implicit knowledge, and classify it into a taxonomy for more effective use in analyzing the past and predicting the future of costs and revenue growth (Hickman, Smaltz, 2008). The disadvantages or cons of using decision support systems in healthcare organization is the cost of maintaining them with accurate data, both form a software spending and time invested standpoint (Hickman, Smaltz, 2008). Second, the quality of the data being used will be directly proportional to hwo well the integration adapters and connectors have been designed and implemented. A disadvantage of using a decision support system in healthcare is the lack of consistency in the data delivered when integration has only partially been done, and enterprise-wide systems are not fully supported in the decision making frameworks of the applications (Hickman, Smaltz, 2008). A third disadvantage is the potential for decision makers in healthcare organizations to rely more on metrics they had in place previously that measured only siloed, single department-based activity than measuring collaboration. The tendency to rely on previous-generation metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) often traps management of healthcare providers in a previous-generation mindset, marginalizing the full value of the decision support system (Tan, Payton, 2010).

2. What are the pros and cons of clinical decision support systems?

The nature of clinical decision support systems. In providing physicians and medical staff with expert-level data analysis, intelligence and solution modeling, is to streamline their tasks and get more effective care to the patient. The proofs or advantages of these systems include indications their analysis and prognosis is very high relative to manual methods (Hickman, Smaltz, 2008), the state-of-the-art levels of integration to pharmacy and billing workflows including Medicare are real-time (Tan, Payton, 2010) and the level of real-time integration to 3rd party databases and internal records is accurate and reliable (Hickman, Smaltz, 2008). Taken together these factors create a highly effective clinical decision support system that can revolutionize how healthcare providers get the most out of their information assets. The cons or disadvantages of clinical decision support systems include a lack of user adoption in the majority of failed or only mediocre-performing systems (Hickman, Smaltz, 2008); the systems not being designed as a core part of the diagnosis and treatment workflows (Tan, Payton, 2010) and the exceptionally high cost of maintaining these systems over time