Introduction
When selecting a health IT (HIT) system, several stakeholders should be involved to work collaboratively for the success of the exercise. According to Nelson and Staggers (2018), any form of HIT initiative requires the close coordination of various players to ensure that all health-related data are managed well and patient privacy is protected to enhance service delivery. The following are the stakeholders that are involved in the selection of a HIT system – Board members, chief executive officer, chief financial officer, chief medical officer, medical department leaders, clinicians, office managers, billing department, and front office staff members.
Goals and Interests
Clinical Goals (Chief Medical Officer, Medical Department Leaders, and Clinicians)
Chief medical officer and medical department leaders have shared clinical goals and interests. They are important to this selection process because they offer useful clinical advice and insights concerning how the HIT system should be operated. They give their input and feedback from a leadership perspective by raising all pertinent issues upfront. Specifically, these stakeholders are concerned with the hospital’s needs together with how the proposed system would affect the overall organizational mission and vision. On their part, clinicians play a central role in the selection of a HIT system because they are involved in its day-to-day usage to facilitate decision-making for quality and timely service delivery to patients (Van de Wetering, 2018). Therefore, they know which system would be most suitable to address the underlying needs to ensure that patient needs are addressed comprehensively for improved care provision. Given that clinicians are mainly the end-users of HIT systems, their feedback and input are invaluable.
Operational Goals (Office Managers, Front Office Staff, and Billing Department)
For any HIT system to work effectively, office managers, front office staff, and those working in the billing department should be involved. Office managers and front office staff are the first individuals to engage patients when they visit a healthcare setup. Therefore, the input of these stakeholders is important, as they know the nature of problems that should be addressed by the HIT system. Their goal is to ensure that the system facilitates quick and easy customer service, especially when taking the initial patient information and entering it into the system. Similarly, the billing department is involved to ensure that the proposed system integrates functions that support the billing process. For instance, the HIT should be robust enough to link with the various health insurance companies and different payer systems available in the market.
Financial Goals (Board Members, Chief Executive Officer, and Chief Financial Officer)
The selection and implementation of any HIT system require a substantial amount of resources, and thus the management plays a central role in the process. The main goal of this group of stakeholders is to gauge the ability of the facility to finance the implementation of the selected system. Additionally, these stakeholders are focused on how the system would improve service delivery and affect the overall financial well-being of the hospital. Overall, this team ensures that the HIT system has a good return on investment and improved performance of all sectors in the organization.
Conclusion
The selection of a HIT system should involve all key stakeholders working as a team to make the right decisions for the improvement of service delivery, patient satisfaction, and safety. The different stakeholders pursue clinical, operational, and financial goals for the overall performance of the healthcare facility. The key stakeholders include medical officers, the chief executive officer, front office staff members, and clinicians among others as highlighted in this paper.
References
Nelson, R., & Staggers, N. (2018). Health informatics: An interprofessional approach (2nd ed.). Elsevier.
Van de Wetering, R. (2018). IT-enabled clinical decision support: An empirical study on antecedents and mechanisms. Journal of Healthcare Engineering, 1–10. Web.