How Healthcare Enterprise Resource Planning (HERP) Software Improves Efficiency In Healthcare

The importance of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) in healthcare

Discuss about the Healthcare Enterprise Resource Planning.

It is currently more than twenty years that the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system has been in use in the healthcare department. Consequently, this healthcare system has shown an ultimate as well as a highly valued solution for many corporations starting form healthcare, manufacturing to the disseminations ones (Wang, Kung, and Byrd, 2018, p. 5). Certainly, the software application is a major success in a vast of ways to most of the organizations that have placed it into use. Indeed, ERP is a technological software that enables and improve the capacity of communication between different divisions under an organization. Thus it supports the workforce to perform work in a better way, therefore, enhancing productivity in the workplace (Angst, Wowak, Handley, and Kelley, 2017). Accordingly, as a result of the proactive capability of the ERP application it was initially related to the manufacturing company since the purpose of designing it was to resolve problems which constrained the potential of production, nevertheless, currently the ERP is supporting efficiency in a number of ways in different business sectors (Almajali, Masa’deh, and Tarhini, 2016, p. 551). Therefore, because of its activeness, the ERP system is being endorsed by a range of dissimilar organizations and healthcare is not an exception. Therefore, ERP is a software application that comprises a sequence of modules which connect information into a single program, which enables data storage and accessibility in a  more simplified. Certainly, this technology is designed to offer surveillance on data and enhance the rate of information exchange within different departments in an organization.

Research has shown that ERP system is the ultimate answer to a range of industries thus healthcare is not an exception. Actually, hospitals are in need of a more interrelated system since the information that is conveyed from one department to another is quite essential and it may not attain its core purpose it if fails to arrive in time to the desired destination. Distinct from other business where loss is only measured in terms of money, the loss in the healthcare sector is measured in terms of human lives. The healthcare sector is committed on increasing healthcare quality as well as operational efficiency and at the same time making sure that it cut down the expense through optimization of back-end functionalities (Eriksson, Holden, Williamsson, and Dellve, 2016, p. 105). In order to increase on the returns, minimise expenses and attain a seamless healthcare scale, it is vital that the back-end operations are improved. Once the back-end operations are enhanced the efficiency of the business operations such as inventory management, supply chain management, billing, patient relationship management, finance and human resource management stand to improve (Garg, and Agarwal, 2014, p. 404). For that reason, this success can only come true when the business operations are optimized and technology-enabled using a successful Healthcare Enterprise Resource Planning (HERP) execution.

HERP and healthcare efficiency

The healthcare is undergoing a steadfast revolution as a result of information technology (IT) playing a significantly key part towards its delivery. Moreover, the healthcare department expects an exceptional development in this sector as it implements ERP system and specifically the Health Information Management System (HIMS) in addition to setting up of intranets for the exchange of information as well as offering remote diagnostic services through telemedicine. Recent research shows that the usage of computers by practitioners has led to modifications as well as hospital expenses. Healthcare Enterprise Resource Planning (HERP) is a class of the ERP that is designed to run the whole healthcare operations by relating the entire activities that happen in the organizations. Some of these activities include resource management, finance, decision support and human resource only to mention a few (Almajali, Masa’deh, and Tarhini, 2016, p. 555). In the case of the healthcare ERP system, it shall be classified into three class requirements. First, it entails database requirements. The HERP system is tasked with the keeping of patient data for future reference. Therefore, there has to be a special place to keep patients files and records to allow for easy access and retrieval in future. As a result, there has to be a unification between the patient data and the medical officer. In this case, there has to a common database that will be used for storing these fundamental records. A normal enterprise will entail activities to do with production, logistics, human resources, services, material management among many others. Second, the execution of ERP system comes with the notion of an integrated financial control such that all activities within the healthcare enterprise generate a suitable entry in the record storage system. Lastly, but not least the healthcare ERP focus is how to manage the enterprise resources by dealing with critical subject matters of capacity and priorities.

The most important point that should be noted is that before implementing a HERP model, the health facility is supposed to agree on the guideline standards to aid in the description as well as attainability of the vision of the state-of-art “digital” hospital. Indeed, these directive principles act as the baseline for the HERP application. Nevertheless, it has to be revised to make sure that it corresponds to the main target of the healthcare organization. I the case of this HERP healthcare facility the following are the directive principles that are supposed to be considered at the time of ERP implementation: The choosing of clinical as well as healthcare information system and the system vendor has to support a “wireless” filmless and paperless setting.

• The system should automate to support all functionalities in the healthcare facility such as human resources, finances, stocks, purchases, among others to make sure that these practices are all integrated with the essential health information system.
• Procedures and policies, the design of flow of work in addition to supporting managerial and clinical information operations will be able to support the capability of the facility to maintain focus service at the care level.
• Actual data and workflow integration in between the entire operational parts will fall into place and ensure that the system will not be tolerant to redundant process
• The entire information technology decisions arrived at shall be in a position to complement the healthcare mission statement and vision statement as well as its set out ails and goals, which is to make health care become as digital as possible (Seethamraju, 2015, p. 481).

Implementing HERP in healthcare

Accordingly, the healthcare facility is supposed to look at the HERP system application as an integral and vital part of its overall business strategy. It is a requirement that when ERP technology is employed in an organization, it should be in a position to be applied in all facet of the company (Petrov, Lakhno, and Korchenko, 2016, p. 123). In the case of healthcare facility, the HERP should cover all the organization’s facets by integrating human resources, technology, processes as well as cultural components. On the other hand, the healthcare facility is not solely supposed to only implement essential ancillary and healthcare information software package. Nonetheless, it has to expand the implementation. Thus the software should be extended to the point that it covers the entire medical spectrum running all the way from surgical equipment, patients’ beds to pagers as well as light system applications. Therefore, it is a requirement the healthcare leverage the standard of the industry as well as the regulations to help improve the link between the project shareholders and external business partners. The healthcare organization is supposed to make sure that the system is imperative to the design to see to it that it is capable of being integrated with the forthcoming generation of products in addition to evolution changes in the industry. Consequently, the system requirements are supposed to be flexible enough to suit both the present as well as future changes because the healthcare sector requirements keep on changing with the change in technology (Peng, and Gala, 2014, p. 26). Both business and clinical operations, operation performance, and the safety of patients’ should be optimized by crafting a state-of-art best quality “digital” complete hospital with the latest edge of technology. The figure below displays expansive fundamental component requirements for construction of a world-class HERP system.

The HERP should make sure that it integrates all the departments within the organization to allow physicians to have instantaneous access to patient’s medical information from other practitioner’s offices, and emergency rooms. On the same note, the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system should substitute the need for various interfaces between two or more application inside the hospital. It should consist of an integrated database for storage of different files and data records of the hospital and patient information and heighten the reporting capacities in addition to standardization.

The process of buying an ERP system calls for some decision points as well as several aspects that have to be considered before deciding to acquire the software model (Sanja, 2013, p. 404). In the case of the healthcare facility, HERP system selection process the following criteria will be applied:

• Healthcare goals and objectives: The key objective for adopting an ERP system is to enhance the organization’s goals which are to foster an efficient service delivery to patients who are the sole customers of the premise, security of data records and the general operation management of the facility.
• Functional hardware and software requirements: while it is true that a majority of organizations share general operations, nonetheless, the organization’s industry specification will dictate its details (Kerzner, and Kerzner, 2017). Corporations won need acts as its compass direction in governing the elements that are most significant to its operations. Therefore, the healthcare organization’s stakeholder should be keen all the functions that must be met in an average business day. Also, it should target to review all parts of the list despite even when the processes being done might be external to the system.
• Underlying technology and forthcoming scalability: Initially the underlying technology of ERP system was not a necessity, the dominant requirement was only software functionality when it came to choosing a novel system. Nevertheless, technology changes rapidly, and that is not the case today. Thus, current choosing an ERP system involves the latest technology in the market as it will offer a longer operation period and will make a better investment.
• Resources and budget: The ERP system comes with a variation regarding The price depends on the complexity of the software application and functionality. Therefore, a healthcare organization should consider these aspects before deciding to purchase the ERP system by considering its workload.
• A team of trustees: The choice of individuals both inside and outside the organizations play a major role towards the success of any project (Lyytinen, and Newman, 2015, p. 78). Therefore the organizations have to be aware of the people that will implement the system and those that will manage the project during construction of the new system.
• Process description: This the area that each person fears most, but it is not dangerous at all. When demos and research are done, it tends to generate more queries and answers. These tests and demonstrations are significant since they help to include all the projects requirements that may have been left out at one point or another.        

Choosing the right HERP system

Several organizations are using the ERP software, and some of these companies include manufacturing, construction industrial services. Indeed, the use of ERP software has improved communication among departments in the manufacturing sector. Communication is an essential aspect of a manufacturing form that comprises several departments. Thus, an ERP software helps to improve and foster effective communication amongst various departments by linking the whole corporation into a single system (Li, Tryfonas, and Li, 2016, p. 343). In the construction industry, ERP system has made it possible to assimilate data. The ERP software in the construction sector has played a significant role in operational data and dynamic analysis of finances, which aid in providing executives with accurate and precise calculated real-time information (Jacobs, Chase, and Lummus, 2014, p. 533). This data is important as it helps the construction company to effectively rack simultaneous operations and reports, which help it in managing deficiencies across different sections in an efficient way. On the other hand, the use of ERP in the professional services include accurate storage of expense records, workforce data, and inventory control. Consequently, this results in more jovial customers and improved edge regarding competition.           

The significance of the HERP System

Most of the technological applications demand clinical information source which entails longitudinal medical records of each patient served by the hospital service delivery system (Shen, Chen, and Wang, 2016, p. 129). Accordingly, medical decisions which enhance applications that can extract clinical data repository which offers evidence-based information practice in the real-time to enable secure as well as effective patient care.

Provide high-quality practices: Since the growth of ERP systems is increasing at a very fast speed, there is a constant urge to induce professionalism and best practices in the healthcare sector. In this case, patient’s demands have increased unlike in the past times. Currently, patients are demanding for the best services for their money. Thus it is high time that healthcare organization strives to ensure that they meet these requirements by employing the best enterprise application that can offer quality services.    

Health Information Privacy and Security

Privacy is an underlying governing principle of the patient-practitioner relation for efficient and effective healthcare delivery. Therefore, it is a requirement that patients share their information with their doctors to enable correct diagnosis as well as the determination of treatment, particularly to avert adversative drug interactions. Nonetheless, at times some patients can refuse to disclose vital information in case of health problems like HIV and psychiatric behavior since they believe that disclosing such information can lead to social stigma and discrimination. Nevertheless, such cases are now a thing of the past because ERP system serves various purposes such as diagnosis and treatment. A good example is how information has been used to enhance the efficiency of healthcare systems, drive public policy deployment as well as federal administrative levels as well as subdividing  

The failure in patients’ data privacy and security is as a result of data breaches which has led to the loss and compromise of numerous individual identifiable healthcare information. To counteract this problem of data breaches, it is essential to analyze to understand the source of the security failures and then come up with a special approach to address the matter (Islam, CH, Bilal, and Ilyas, 2017, p. 2). Accordingly, through analysis of the different breaches that have taken place shed light to conclude that a majority of these breaches may not have happened. The ability to secure an organization’s valuable and vulnerable resources such as information and data is not only an appropriate practice it helps the company not to run into outburst in terms of expenses that come with the response to data breaches, embarrassment, negative image, ultimately of trust by clients (patients) as well as healthcare givers. Most of the time, data breaches that take place may have been avoided by the organization laying down a suitable plan and the right security design together with the execution of appropriate security measures.         

Potential Risks and Data Breaches in ERP Technologies

Threats to Information Privacy: Threats to patient privacy and information security can be classified into two major groups. The first one is an organizational threat which is as a result of the inappropriate access of patient information by either interior agents or by practitioners abusing their entitled privileges or even from outside agents exploiting the vulnerability of information systems (Saa et al., 2017). Second, is as a result of system threats which arise from an agent I the form of information distribution chain exploiting the disclosed information past the intended usage.

Organizational Threats: This type of threat come in different forms like a health practitioner accessing data with no any authorised need or an external attacker (hacker) which is likely to infiltrate the healthcare information infrastructure with the intention to steal the information or make it inoperable (Mozaffar, Cresswell, Lee, Williams, and Sheikh, 2016, p. 25). At the inception point, such organizational threat could be are characterized as accessibility, motives, technical capacities, and resources. About the elements, dissimilar threats pose different risk levels to the organization. Thus it demands different prevention and alleviation approaches (Kshetri, 2014, p. 1137). For instance, motives can be in the form of economic or noneconomic format. In case the motives are for insurers, journalists or employers patient records can be of both economic as well as noneconomic significance. At the same time, some can be accompanied with noneconomic motives such as for a person to engage themselves in romantic relationships. In the current healthcare setting which has gone far regarding technology such as the use ERP among other health information systems, the most prevalent threats include

Insider curiosity: When an insider has the chance to access patient data they are likely to interfere with a patient’s records due to the curiousness or because of their reasons such as like a nurse accessing a colleague’s data to find out about their probability of having sexually transmitted infections; or a medical practitioners accessing possibly embarrassing health data regarding a celebrity and channelling into through media.

Disclosure by accident: A medical practitioner can unintentionally disclose a patient’s information to others such as sending an email message to a wrong address of the leaking of information as a result of peer-to-peer sharing of files.

Data breach by internal healthcare: People inside the healthcare department can access a patient’s information and then circulate it to the outside individuals as a form of taking revenge on the patient’s or for material gain.

Data breach by outsiders through physical intrusion: Such scenarios happen when an individual from outside the facility gains access to the healthcare information system structure using intimidation or forceful entry.

Privacy constraints not only stem from outside sources of information flow buts can also result from the system faults due to maintenance issues.  

It is important that healthcare organizations strive to see to it that they enhance the integrity, confidentiality, privacy, availability of data in health care. Indeed, these aspects are essential when it comes to securing the patient information. Information is not a mystery, but it is built on a sequential assessment of dangers and risks that are in existence in the present health information systems such as ERP and electronic medical record systems (Laudon, and Laudon, 2016). In accordance to the Federal laws that regulate a patient’s privacy and security demands that both private and public health organizations should carry out a risk assessment process as part of their security management and enhancement course (Eden, Sedera, and Tan, 2014, p. 3). According to the risk assessment, health organizations should select security controls which have to be executed on a constantly monitored to reduce the risks and vulnerabilities to the least extent. The core goal of any healthcare organization is to support risk management process to secure the company as well as its capacity to perform its agenda and not only its Information Technology resources.

It is beyond reasonable doubts that data breaches can and must be prevented using all possible means. Since healthcare organizations have accepted to move to a “digital” paradigm of service delivery, it should be ready to collect keep safe and responsibly share the patient information to protect individual healthcare information (Escobar-Rodríguez, and Bartual-Sopena, 2015, p. 130). On the same note, it should make sure that patient information is not compromised by attackers among other malicious insiders or unintentionally accessed, stolen or lost. Accordingly, despite the great concentration geared on response once data has already been breached which is more expensive to organizations yet it only does little to remediate the losses of the persons’ whom the breach of their information has been exposed to fraud and theft. Subsequently, it is high time that all health care providers both private and the public who are the custodians of patient data across the world to double their efforts in fighting against data breach (Laudal, Bjaalid, and Mikkelsen, 2017, p 11). There is need to understand the risks related to the gathering storing and sharing sensitive personal data as well as the various ways through which data is breached in addition to available tools and equipment to secure the data (Kaushik, and Raman, 2015, p 65). Therefore, an expertise mechanism has to be devised to avoid such breaches, and they have to be addressed sufficiently in case they happen. To make this process become a successful healthcare firms are required to appreciate the reality that no single solution is suitable for all organizations. Thus, information security should be tailored in accordance to the type (s) plus sensitivity for data protection, the possible risks to the data the type of information system for the organization, both software and hardware applications and their interconnectivity.

Similarly, it should be the responsibility of all business workforce3s in healthcare facilities with electronic information systems to understand and be in the position to implement a periodical system auditing as it is of great significance when it comes to security control of information systems of any kind. The most vital thing in the case of privacy and security matters, a healthcare organization should first consider design requirements. During system design development of the information system, the project team of which healthcare stakeholders are parts should figures out the construction design requirements (Kurbel, 2016). Consequently, this helps to determine the decision made concerning data and information that shall be gathered, and the way in which these data should be shared and used within the system (O’Malley, Piroozfar, Farr, and Pomponi, 2015, p. 224). Accordingly, healthcare organizations should adopt beast practices such as regular system surveillance and adherence to the HIPAA tenets privacy principles and security regulations (Li, Chang, and Yen, 2017, p. 272). In so doing healthcare shall be in a better place to maintain and enhance information security and avoid issues of patient data breaches.

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