Assignment: Addressing Challenges With Interoperability Essay

Assignment Addressing Challenges With Interoperability Essay

The usage of technology has become ubiquitous in all health care spheres since the turn of the present decade. Health care facilities have embraced the usage of this phenomenon to ensure that patient data is shared seamlessly across difference geographical locations, systems and departments within a hospital. At the core of the implementation of health care interoperability is the electronic health record system. The interconnectedness of this system makes it easier for various stakeholders within the health care sphere to access and share pertinent patient data during assessment and treatment processes. However, even with the adoption of this interconnected network to enhance sharing of patient information and generally improve the quality of care, challenges still abound in the usage of such systems. Appreciating these challenges thus becomes an important aspect of seeking solutions in order to make interoperability a reality in health care. To this end, the present paper will identify an interoperability challenge, identify the root cause of the same using workflow structure, and then offer a workable solution to it using evidence-based literature.

Identification of the Problem

The issue of patient billing has experienced some avoidable technicalities as regards health care interoperability within hospitals settings. One of the most affected aspects of the entire process involves health care billing. During one of my nursing care shifts at the intensive care ward, I wanted to bill a patient using the hospital’s EHR database system. As with all other hospitals, the final billing of critical care cases entail recording the entire supplies utilized during the treatment process, which may involve surgical supplies (Kohler, 2015). The availability of such information helps in summing up the bill accrued by a patient upon their discharge or, in unfortunate cases, death. However, when pulling out the information on the list of surgical supplies used by the patient, I experienced a delay that lasted forever without resolving. When the IT technician was summoned, she could not resolve the issue only to later identify that a security breach of the system had occurred.

Assignment Addressing Challenges With Interoperability Essay

A further analysis of the issue revealed that the entire database hosting patient information had been compromised. As a consequence, over one hundred and fifty patient files had gone missing from the database. This had impacted several health care personnel, from nurses, to physicians to pharmacists, who could not prescribe drugs while the former personnel could not perform their duties on these patients as pertinent information regarding their conditions was missing. Thus, essentially, the workforce at the facility could not treat or care for the patients at various levels due to missing data concerning their medication dosages, the evaluation of progress, and even prescription of new drug regimen at the facility due to the system breach.

Analysis of Workflow and Structure Associated with the Security Breach

The diagnosis of the issue revealed the existence of a malware at the hospital’s EHR system’s central server unit. Apparently, a hacker had compromised the multi-patient monitors for the entire patient registry and deleted certain files belonging to the 150

patients that were affected. The anonymous hacker achieved this through the introduction of a malware into the system (Rezaeibagha, Khin & Susilo, 2015). However, the normally active events-drive alerts did not work as the hacker had disabled it prior to accessing the system. The coding of the malware had been done such that it was instructed to coordinate the execution of workflow commands from the intensive care wards to the principal server at the facility’s records unit minus compromising data from other wards. As a consequence of this omission in the attack, it was not easy to detect that the files from the intensive care wards had been compromised since the hacker deployed the virus into the hospital’s EHR workflow management system.

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Moreover, the notification alerts did not occur as the hacker had disabled it enabling the malware to become integrated into the HER management system related to the intensive care ward patients as initially stated. Whereas the possibility of a human handler integrating the malware into the system was high, the system was already vulnerable to attacks since it was operating on a public network (Friedman, Parrish, & Ross, 2013). The usage of this network was such that the integration of the systems between different departments from the central server unit could occur seamlessly. Further, such an arrangement made it easier for EHR’s Application Programming Interface vendors to readily exchange data between disparate systems. In this facility, audit trails concerning data from the intensive care unit are not difficult to undertake as the on-premise systems housed the data maps at a central point. However, the detection of the hacker did not occur as they appeared well-versed with the system.

Assignment: Addressing Challenges With Interoperability Essay Conclusion

Therefore, whereas hospitals have adopted technologies such as EHR into their system, the interoperability of such systems has some challenges. Issues such as security breaches have dogged them making it important to seek for solutions. According to studies, conducting a root cause analysis could help health care settings prevent future happenstances of these challenges.

The purpose of this assignment is to investigate solutions to challenges with interoperability in health care delivery environments. To complete the assignment, you will select a problem with interoperability you have witnessed in your current or past work environment, evaluate options for addressing the problem, and recommend a solution based on evidence.

Write a 750-1,000 word paper that addresses the following:

Describe the problem with the lack of interoperability witnessed in the healthcare care delivery environment. Include details about the scope of the problem, including who and what was impacted and how.
Provide an analysis of the workflow and structure related to the problem to identify its root cause.
Recommend a potential solution to the problem and provide evidence from the literature demonstrating its successful implementation in other cases to support your recommendation.

Integrate 3-5 scholarly sources into your recommendation.

Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the APA Style Guide, located in the Student Success Center. An abstract is not required.

This assignment uses a rubric. Please review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion.

You are required to submit this assignment to LopesWrite.

Lopes Write Policy

For assignments that need to be submitted to Lopes Write, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me.

Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes.

Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own?

Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score.

Late Policy

The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies.

Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances.

If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect.

I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension.

As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading.

Communication

Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me:

Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class.

Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours.

Important information for writing discussion questions and participation

Welcome to class

Hello class and welcome to the class and I will be your instructor for this course. This is a -week course and requires a lot of time commitment, organization, and a high level of dedication. Please use the class syllabus to guide you through all the assignments required for the course. I have also attached the classroom policies to this announcement to know your expectations for this course. Please review this document carefully and ask me any questions if you do. You could email me at any time or send me a message via the “message” icon in halo if you need to contact me. I check my email regularly, so you should get a response within 24 hours. If you have not heard from me within 24 hours and need to contact me urgently, please send a follow up text to

I strongly encourage that you do not wait until the very last minute to complete your assignments. Your assignments in weeks 4 and 5 require early planning as you would need to present a teaching plan and interview a community health provider. I advise you look at the requirements for these assignments at the beginning of the course and plan accordingly. I have posted the YouTube link that explains all the class assignments in detail. It is required that you watch this 32-minute video as the assignments from week 3 through 5 require that you follow the instructions to the letter to succeed. Failure to complete these assignments according to instructions might lead to a zero. After watching the video, please schedule a one-on-one with me to discuss your topic for your project by the second week of class. Use this link to schedule a 15-minute session. Please, call me at the time of your appointment on my number. Please note that I will NOT call you.

Please, be advised I do NOT accept any assignments by email. If you are having technical issues with uploading an assignment, contact the technical department and inform me of the issue. If you have any issues that would prevent you from getting your assignments to me by the deadline, please inform me to request a possible extension. Note that working fulltime or overtime is no excuse for late assignments. There is a 5%-point deduction for every day your assignment is late. This only applies to approved extensions. Late assignments will not be accepted.

If you think you would be needing accommodations due to any reasons, please contact the appropriate department to request accommodations.

Plagiarism is highly prohibited. Please ensure you are citing your sources correctly using APA 7th edition. All assignments including discussion posts should be formatted in APA with the appropriate spacing, font, margin, and indents. Any papers not well formatted would be returned back to you, hence, I advise you review APA formatting style. I have attached a sample paper in APA format and will also post sample discussion responses in subsequent announcements.

Your initial discussion post should be a minimum of 200 words and response posts should be a minimum of 150 words. Be advised that I grade based on quality and not necessarily the number of words you post. A minimum of TWO references should be used for your initial post. For your response post, you do not need references as personal experiences would count as response posts. If you however cite anything from the literature for your response post, it is required that you cite your reference. You should include a minimum of THREE references for papers in this course. Please note that references should be no more than 5 years old except recommended as a resource for the class. Furthermore, for each discussion board question, you need ONE initial substantive response and TWO substantive responses to either your classmates or your instructor for a total of THREE responses. There are TWO discussion questions each week, hence, you need a total minimum of SIX discussion posts for each week. I usually post a discussion question each week. You could also respond to these as it would count towards your required SIX discussion posts for the week.

I understand this is a lot of information to cover in 5 weeks, however, the Bible says in Philippians 4:13 that we can do all things through Christ that strengthens us. Even in times like this, we are encouraged by God’s word that we have that ability in us to succeed with His strength. I pray that each and every one of you receives strength for this course and life generally as we navigate through this pandemic that is shaking our world today. Relax and enjoy the course!

Hi Class,

Please read through the following information on writing a Discussion question response and participation posts.

Contact me if you have any questions.

Important information on Writing a Discussion Question

Your response needs to be a minimum of 150 words (not including your list of references)
There needs to be at least TWO references with ONE being a peer reviewed professional journal article.
Include in-text citations in your response
Do not include quotes—instead summarize and paraphrase the information
Follow APA-7th edition
Points will be deducted if the above is not followed

Participation –replies to your classmates or instructor

A minimum of 6 responses per week, on at least 3 days of the week.
Each response needs at least ONE reference with citations—best if it is a peer reviewed journal article
Each response needs to be at least 75 words in length (does not include your list of references)
Responses need to be substantive by bringing information to the discussion or further enhance the discussion. Responses of “I agree” or “great post” does not count for the word count.
Follow APA 7th edition
Points will be deducted if the above is not followed
Remember to use and follow APA-7th edition for all weekly assignments, discussion questions, and participation points.
Here are some helpful links
Student paper example
Citing Sources
The Writing Center is a great resource