Introduction
In the modern world that is technology-oriented, the success of many specialists depends upon the use of proper tools and databases that ensure timely access to information. Professionals involved in the provision of healthcare do not present an exception since many tasks such as managing patient appointments and hospital workflows cannot be fulfilled without the use of automated computer systems. Master patient index (MPI) systems and similar tools play a significant role in the automatization of healthcare processes, but internal problems often cause the disruptions of work at different departments. In the assigned case, similar issues are caused by the incompleteness of data provided by the software vendor.
Governance Standards and the Prevention of Further Problems
Project governance belongs to the number of the most important problems to be discussed prior to the development of any projects that can impact internal working processes. It involves a set of practices that helps facilitate and control the implementation of new projects and, therefore, allows preventing many problems with computer systems or other innovations. Speaking about the governance of projects, it is also pivotal to note that such decisions are inextricably connected with the distribution of responsibility (Alie, 2015).
The latter turns out to be extremely important for the successful development and implementation of new tools. Thus, setting governance standards helps determine the roles of different specialists involved in project development and testing and their areas of accountability, which is helpful for productivity. The points listed above should be taken into account to accept a range of standards helping to avoid such business problems.
As is clear from the case being discussed, the key issues related to the situation with MPI include the absence of physical data models for the previously used system. Apart from that, the hospital’s business problems include the lack of adequate software testing activities helping to define potential problems prior to the implementation of new systems. Proper project governing standards that can be used to improve the situation and prevent the repetition of the scenario are related to four areas. In line with the PMI standards, the healthcare provider is to focus on the distribution of roles, the organization of meetings, and the establishment of proper risk assessment and testing practices (Alie, 2015). Importantly, the implementation of such standards may require the use of additional financial resources.
The first standard practice to be taken into account is the creation of project teams and the distribution of responsibilities between team members. Such measures can be extremely helpful in ensuring positive results since project managers define people responsible for all tasks for each project deliverable (Alie, 2015). In reference to the hospital from the case, the use of these standards can make the planning stage well-organized and prevent the development of a culture of blame that is counterproductive.
The organization of project team meetings belongs to the number of practices that ensure effective communication between people involved in project evaluation and implementation. In the case under analysis, it is critical to conduct meetings to support information exchange between the end-users of the system (registration clerks) and healthcare technicians. The need to use this standard practice seems to be obvious. However, as it follows from the case, the decision to conduct a system conversion was not preceded by meetings devoted to testing and similar problems.
Before starting the project, the hospital failed to establish proper risk assessment and testing standards, which resulted in a difficult situation with data retrieval. In particular, the assessment of risks was conducted after the implementation of the new system, which does not conform to the accepted project governance practices (Alie, 2015). Working on future projects, the team may need to study the reviews of products to identify and classify potential risks. In addition, it will be extremely important for them to conduct a series of tests and organize user trainings before implementing new systems.
Options for the Analysis of the New Data Model
Physical data models are actively used in project management in order to depict the principles of work of computer systems in a well-organized manner. As is demonstrated in the assigned case, they can also be considered as important tools for analysis that help define the degree of compliance with specific project requirements. The absence of a data model for the system in use was among the key problems contributing to issues in information outputs.
Therefore, the use of data modeling practices to create it and document differences between the two models would be the best option. However, given the absence of the model for the old system, the project team could use other recommendations focusing on contacting the vendor.
It is mentioned in the case that the analysis of key requirements was conducted by the team responsible for project implementation. However, the particular types of requirements included in the analysis are not specified, which can be regarded as an area for improvement. It was possible for the team to focus on documenting some non-functional requirements such as data integrity or interoperability prior to reviewing the data model provided by the vendor (Khan, Jan, Tahir, Khan, & Ullah, 2016). Using standardized project requirements during the stage of new model analysis, those responsible for project implementation would be aware of potential differences related to entity attributes.
Following the recognition of the abovementioned problem, it would be possible to take some actions to retrieve necessary details. For instance, the representatives of the team could contact the vendors of the MPI system to ask them about any limitations concerning the formats of medical record numbers. Formats used by different healthcare providers may vary, and it would be the responsibility of the vendor to inform the organization about potential mistakes (Just, Marc, Munns, & Sandefer, 2016).
Therefore, the company selling this software could be asked to extend the data model to add information on supported formats and the presence of fixed-length fields. Another strategy that the team could use to check the compliance with their requirements would involve studying the reviews of other users of the MPI system. Given the incompleteness of data included in the provided model, such activities would help determine technical limitations and come up with a list of specific questions to the vendor.
Conclusion
The newly-installed MPI system that seemed to be in a completely operable state failed to support a specific format of patient record numbers due to a variety of mistakes made by the implementation team. To avoid similar problems in the future, the organization is recommended to adhere to common practices for project development and pay focused attention to the stage of preliminary testing. Also, given that software vendors sometimes provide incomplete data, contacting them to discuss any concerns is extremely important.
References
Alie, S. S. (2015). Project governance: #1 critical success factor, presented at PMI Global Congress, Orlando, 2015. Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute.
Just, B. H., Marc, D., Munns, M., & Sandefer, R. (2016). Why patient matching is a challenge: Research on Master Patient Index (MPI) data discrepancies in key identifying fields. Perspectives in Health Information Management, 13, 1e. Web.
Khan, F., Jan, S. R., Tahir, M., Khan, S., & Ullah, F. (2016). Survey: Dealing non-functional requirements at architecture level. VFAST Transactions on Software Engineering, 9(2), 7-13.