With the expansion into larger communities and the attempts to embrace the resulting diversity, healthcare organizations often struggle with a rapid and uncontrollable flow of a massive amount of data, specifically, patient-related one. Therefore, tools for navigating the new informational setting must be introduced into the healthcare context. As a healthcare expert, one must specifically check that the collected information remains credible and valid. By introducing tools for data stewardship, specifically, tools for coordinating data flow within departments and staff members, one can ensure that the broader scope and amount of information is managed properly, with crucial data being disseminated among staff members effectively.
Specifically, the integration of data stewardship will introduce opportunities for maintaining the information within the healthcare system to remain valid and accurate. Namely, the focus on speed and interdisciplinary collaboration, which the specified approach facilitates, introduces ample possibilities for enhancing inbound and outbound data flow, particularly, in relation to the HSE data (Sayles, 2016).
Indeed, Sayles (2016) asserts that the application of data stewardship as the means of approaching the process of data management within the healthcare context leads to employees embracing the “responsibilities and accountabilities associated with managing, collecting, viewing, storing, sharing, disclosing, or otherwise making use of personal health information” (p. 193). Therefore, the inclusion of the data stewardship principle into the framework for handling information within the healthcare setting will lead to an improved handling of patient data and, therefore, fewer medical errors. Consequently, an increase in positive patient outcomes is expected.
Moreover, the specified approach leads to an unambiguous rise in the levels of security and safety of patients’ personal information. Staying within the confined space of the healthcare facility, with its flow being coordinated and controlled carefully solely by staff members, patent data remains strongly protected against any unauthorized access (Sayles, 2016). Specifically, in addition to the digital tools for securing information flow, and additional layer of protection involving minimization of the instances of information mismanagement is added (Sayles, 2016). As a result, a significant improvement in the extent of patient data security and the resulting rise in patients’ safety can be observed in the target environment.
Furthermore, the extent of patient safety rises with the introduction of the proposed tools since the extent of medical errors is minimized with the inclusion of the proposed framework for data management. Specifically, the data quality is believed to rise substantially with the involvement of data stewardship as the means of controlling information flow (Jansen et al., 2019). Furthermore, it will help determine the usefulness of specific information pieces to promote its better arrangement for it to be accessed and utilized accordingly by an interdisciplinary team.
By introducing tools or data stewardship, primarily, digital options for managing the flow of information within healthcare facility departments and, therefore, encouraging active knowledge sharing and cross-disciplinary collaboration, one can prevent instances of information mismanagement form taking place. Specifically, the use of tools such as EHR, which allow for better control of the data flow between departments and healthcare facility members, must be integrated. The specified change will allow for a substantially more effective information management that will lead to fewer medical errors due to a lower rate of instances of data omission r misinterpretation. Therefore, the focus on cross-disciplinary collaboration that the use of data stewardship provides should be seen as a critical solution to the observed issues in controlling data flow and security.
References
Jansen, P., Berg, L. V. D., Overveld, P. V., & Boiten, J. W. (2019). Research data stewardship for healthcare professionals. In Fundamentals of clinical data science (pp. 37-53). Springer.
Sayles, N. B. (2016). Health information management technology: An applied approach. L. L. Gordon (Ed.) (5th ed.). American Health Information Management Association.