Cmgt 554 - Patton-Fuller Community Hospital Networking Project

Patton-Fuller Community Hospital Networking Project

CMGT/554 

Patton-Fuller Community Hospital, like thousands of hospitals across the country, delivers medical treatment to its community by offering the most advanced medical treatment available. PFCH has served the city of Kelsey and the surrounding area since 1975 offering treatment and recovery services for young and aged alike. As a hospital of 600 beds, PFCH relies on technology to provide support to its staff and flexible tools for managing the business of healthcare. This technology increases the diagnostic capabilities of its physicians, ensures the secure storage of detailed personal patient information, efficiently processes claims with insurance companies and facilitates the day to day operations of the administration, clinical operations and support services.

In order to sufficiently comprehend the breadth of technologies impact on PFCH, and adequately understand who uses and benefits from the business systems, what they use these systems for, when are the business systems are used, how they are utilized and to what degree and why are they such an integral part of PFCH’s business.

In reviewing the PFCH business information, it became apparent that when discussing PFCH’s business systems a few relevant assumptions must be made. An example of this would be the action or transaction which occurs upon a patient’s admission to PFCH. During this process, patients are required to provide a substantial amount of personal health and financial information that is used in diagnosis and claims submissions. And for many decades, this information has been entered or input into one type or another of data retention systems from which a patient’s medical history is developed and claims submitted to some payer source for reimbursement. This analysis assumes that several of these business systems exist at PFCH and are a fundamental part of PFCH’s operations.

Patton-Fuller Community Hospital is composed of eight clinical and six administrative areas. Administratively, the six areas of operations are the Executive Management, Human Resources (HR), Operations (Ops) and Finance (Fin), Facilities and, Information Technology (IT). Clinical concentrations include Radiology, Operating Rooms, Wards, Intensive Care Units (ICU), the Emergency Department (ER), the Laboratory and the Pharmacy (Patton-Fuller Community Hospital, 2011).

Among the business systems in use at PFCH are those which directly serve both the administrative and clinical sections of the hospital. Many of the functions of these offerings are systems users are familiar with as they are commonly found on home computers in one form or another. Most familiar are those found within the MS Windows Enterprise 2003 Server which handles the hospitals email (Outlook) and calendar functions so employees can stay connected with professional