Benefits of a Capital Item

The following memo proposes a wider adoption electronic medical records (EMR) system.. The objective is to transform the hospital into a digital healthcare institution whereby productivity can be increased through efficient staffing, accurate diagnosis, and sharing of knowledge and information between departments. The proposal matches the non-profits hospital’s objective to facilitate affordable and quality care to vulnerable people and communities in the region. Since private healthcare organizations are usually burdened with legacy systems, there are numerous benefits that can be realized by updating the IT infrastructure at the organization. 

Benefits of EMR 

The EMR system will bring about a multitude of benefits. First, the technology will be useful at micro level since it enables doctors and nurses to learn more about medicine, share knowledge and information with colleagues and keep the patient’s medical records for easier reference in the future ( Nowicki , 2018). At macro level the community benefits from the easy access to treatment of ailments that require the best medical personnel like heart surgery and also this cuts cost of referring a patient to another hospital to seek treatment 

Second, healthcare EMR systems automatically centralize data from lab systems, billing, supply, courier, payer and other sources. This will enable the hospital to be highly efficiently and will certainly reduce the cases whereby patients are given the wrong medication ( Hersh, et al., 2013) . Third, on-demand services can be provided at affordable prices as we could explore integrating patients’ smart devices with the EMR system to track their vitals and monitor them in case of emergencies (Newman, 2016). This will enrich the patient’s journey with the hospital. Other than enhancing the patient’s experience, it can integrate practice management such as patient appointment scheduling and facilitate resource matching that would usually require many hours of manual work (Hersh et al, 2013). Lastly, the EMR can also provide relief to business disruptions as most data can be stored on the cloud, allowing retrieval of critical information if the IT infrastructure fails. 

It is also important to note that implementation of an EMR system will bring along many opportunities for the organization. The hospital currently has a limited capacity and provides a wide range of healthcare services, including specialized clinics to address the health issues of the community and the wider region. Its staff includes both professional healthcare practitioners and volunteers who are responsible for the day to day operations. Reproductive health, immunization and childhood illnesses are the main priorities for the hospital network. As the outbreak of diseases can be sudden in a dense are such as where the hospital is located, resource management on hospital beds and staffing is very pertinent. It is thus important for the hospital to have an EMR system that is tailored towards the special requirement of a healthcare facility. 

Ways Benefits can Be Estimated 

The benefits of the system can be estimated by looking at the Return of Investment (ROI) and sustainability of the innovation. 

The Return on Investment 

Assessment of the ROI begins with financial considerations for the new system. The financial considerations are shown in table 1. 

Financial Consideration 

Table 1: The financial breakdown of the project 

The budget for the proposal has been broken down into a number of areas. First of all, there will be the cost of purchasing and installing the system. Moreover, there will be labor and productions costs associated with the program; these have been categorized as administrative costs. A number of elements have to be catered to including IT consultation services as well as insurance for the event and compensating all the labor needed during the even in different areas ( Nowicki, 2018) . Another cost area identified is the training costs associated with promoting the new program. In total, the projected budget is expected to be kept under $150,000 and this is to be allocated between the different areas. 

The greatest barrier tied to this innovation is the costs of implementing it the IT upgrade exercise. Implementing an EMR system is quite expensive . The CRM system to acquire is assumed to be custom to the hospital’s use case but could be procured from major providers such as Salesforce or HubSpot. The proxy of the cost is as per Salesforce’s website which quotes $150 per user per month designed for enterprise usage. Assuming the organization subscribes to 20 licenses (for core users at the administrative side only), this would incur yearly expenses of $36 thousand USD. Other additional cost may be upgrading the hardware such as lab computers and mobile data-capture devices which is assumed to be 20% of the annual cost at $9 thousand in the first year, and $3 thousand afterwards for upkeep. This is in comparison to the per bed per year expenses of the hospital that is approximated to be $ 2.7 thousand, which brings the community hospital’s annual operating cost to $ 450 thousand. 

The benefits are harder to quantify as they are mostly intangible benefits in the form of reduced administrative tasks and productivity gain, but a conservative assumption is that the cost reduction should come to about 10% of the operation cost that is $ 45 thousand. This means that the hospital will be able to recoup positive ROI from year II onwards. The details can be seen in the cost-benefit analysis template attached as appendix here. With discount rate set at 6% in line with the latest interest rate, net benefits are estimated to be $ 25 thousand in the next 5 years. 

Sustainability of the New EMR System 

The greatest benefit of the new system stems from its sustainability and its positive effect on efficiency and productive on the organization. By providing information about new modern medicines, machines, or treatments that heals faster, the EMR will transform healthcare system of the hospital and thus reducing the cost of healthcare services ( Nowicki, 2018) . It will also enhance research in the hospital, hence experts will be able to make healthcare provision even more effective and this will enable patients to recover faster. Technological enhancements will allow the hospital to improve patient care and worker efficiency. This initiative at the hospital will make patient care more safe and reliable than in the previous. Doctors and nurses will use hand-held computers to record a patient's medical history and confirm whether they are administering the correct treatment. Lab tests results, medicine orders, and information of vital signs are all electronically kept in the main database that can be referred in future, this enables healthcare seekers to have easier access to their own information and medical records, and thus enabling them to understand what is being done to them ( Nowicki, 2018 ). The electronic database will also amalgamate large amounts of information that is useful in medical research. Considering vast patient history, medical researchers can improve study trends and causes of diseases. 

Conclusion 

The community clinic can reap the benefits of the IT revolution by utilizing a healthcare-tailored EMR system to optimize its day-to-day operation along with the patients care. It will be in the management’s interest to take up the EMR since the cost benefit analysis shows net gain as soon as year II. This runway can be reached sooner as assumption of the analysis was liberal on the cost side. To maximize the benefits, staff needs to understand that it supports rather than replaces their functions so to adopt it frequently in their work. 

References 

Hersh, W.R., Weiner, M.G., Embi, P.J., Logan, J.R., Payne, P.R., Bernstam, E.V., Lehmann, H.P., Hripcsak, G., Hartzog, T.H., Cimino, J.J. & Saltz, J.H. (2013). Caveats for the use of operational electronic health record data in comparative effectiveness research.  Medical care ,  51 (8 0 3), p.S30. 

Newman, J. (2016). Relationships are the future of healthcare. HIMSS 2016 Conference. 

Nowicki, M. (2018).  Introduction to the financial management of healthcare organizations . Health Administration Press, Chicago, Illinois.