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Healthcare is one of the biggest pillars of a stable society, and its improvement and optimization are crucial to human development. One of the aspects of healthcare is the use of IT technologies to innovate and broaden the available methods of practice and their success. When talking about Healthcare IT, it is necessary to consider the main goals of its implementation and the way they are accomplished. The purpose of this essay is to analyze 4 papers on the topic to gain a better understanding of HIT governance and strategic planning. Both the practical and theoretical frameworks of management will be analyzed to gain further insight into the topic.
Differences Between HIT Strategic Planning and HIT Governance
When speaking about HIT, it is important to get a better understanding of what its governance and strategic planning are about. For this reason, the two will be contrasted in the following paragraphs. As noted by Jahn M. in their article from the website Managed Healthcare Executive, the healthcare industry does not have enough experience in the governing of IT as of now, so their management can be insufficient in many aspects (Jahn, 2016). The article emphasizes the limitations businesses face, both financial and technical and suggest various ways of bypassing them. The main goal of HIT governance is to make the technologies as efficient and cost-effective as possible. The proper implementation of management techniques helps medical companies align their work programs to the strategic plan they set (Jahn, 2016). This approach also takes into consideration the application of investments, and their timeliness, as well as the ability to satisfy the investors (Jahn, 2016). The main difference between HIT governance and HIT strategic planning is that the former is business-oriented, while the latter is primarily focused on the client. Strategic planning is used to achieve higher quality care for the patients, and the government ensures the technology works with the least amount of resources required.
Processes and Frameworks Involved in HIT Strategic Planning and HIT Governance
The usage of frameworks to make governance and strategic planning more effective is also crucial to note, as their inclusion helps to gain a better understanding of the topic. While their actual use and integration are a point of debate in the industry, it is important to try and take advantage of an available system to make work management better. Paul Calatayud identifies a few most popular framework businesses use in their practice (as cited in Lindros, 2017). Firstly, he names COBIT as a framework used to govern enterprise IT that employs commonly accepted practices to ensure management and mitigation of risk. Next in his overview is ITIL, created with the aim of establishing a connection between business processes and IT. It combines management practices to govern strategy, transition, operation, design, and service improvement. COSO is another possible framework system, not exclusively for work in HIT, and with a goal of providing risk management options and fraud deterrence. Lastly, the CMMI and FAIR tackle the issues of performance improvement and risk estimation respectively. The latter helps manage cybersecurity, and the former is designed to measure an organizations performance accurately. This assortment of tools and comprehensive approaches to managing governance is widely used to simplify work in the industry. Many of them also include guides to help implementation and organize a workflow with no hindrances.
Identifying and Exploring Theoretical Framework in HIT Strategic Planning and HIT Governance
A research paper by Pyone, Smith, and Van den Broek (2017) seeks to explore the available research on HIT frameworks and their effectiveness, analyzing different works on the subject. There are 3 main approaches to constructing a framework explored in the paper: frameworks originating from new institutional economics, from political science and public administration, and from international development (Pyone et al., 2017). Some frameworks stemming from economics employ principal-agent theory in relation to their outlook on governance, with the patients regarded as principals , and the healthcare providers as agents . This approach treats the relationship between the two as a complex set of interactions where the respective parties have an unequal amount of information (Pyone et al., 2017). This strategy helps to see how policymakers deal with the demands of the public. Another principle used in the economic approach is the theory of common-pool resources. This theory was used in one of the frameworks to estimate the effectiveness of governance in low to middle-income countries (Pyone et al., 2017). This assessment concluded that in many places where the government is unable to effectively manage healthcare, independent efforts of healthcare providers prove to have more effect.
Frameworks originating from political science do not use a concrete theory to base their work on but focuses on core concepts of formality, legitimacy, accountability, and trust. One of the frameworks related to this approach seeks to identify the factors that make the providers accountable for making their services affordable and of good quality (Pyone et al., 2017). These systems focus on observing both the processes and their outcomes, the results of governing.
Lastly, the frameworks originating from international development focus their efforts on measuring governance itself and its effectiveness, as well as the application of the already existing principles to govern healthcare. The supporters of this assessment also constructed a manual for accessing the governance performance that uses data collection to provide a fast, comprehensive overview of system performance (Pyone et al., 2017). Another governance-measuring framework includes the principles of political and economic stability (Pyone et al., 2017). Whose authors state that an improvement in the sphere of health delivery can only be achieved without also stabilizing a countrys economy and tackling the problems with poverty.
The Importance of HIT Strategic Planning and HIT Governance in HIT Acquisition and/or Upgrade
It is apparent that strategic planning and governance play an immense role in the implementation and improvement of HIT. As the structures that help ensure the effectiveness of technology that gets used, they must be effectively implemented to provide both healthcare users and distributors with the best service possible (Wiedower, 2016). Utilizing various frameworks of operation, both pre-established and made from scratch can help any business to effectively manage new technology. Optimizing resources spent on operating HIT can greatly increase the potential profits of an organization, as stated in Managed Healthcare Executive article. The usage of HIT governance is also important in abiding government regulations regarding healthcare, including accountability, protection of confidential information, disaster recovery, and more. Their implementation also helps to alleviate the pressure from share/stakeholders and patients. Overall, governing systems help to meet both the requirements of the company and hold it accountable, providing all parties involved with a fair and effective system.
References
Jahn, M. (2016). Nine best practices in healthcare IT governance. Web.
Lindros, K. (2017). What is IT governance? A formal way to align IT & business strategy. Web.
Pyone, T., Smith, H., & Van den Broek, N. (2017). Frameworks to assess health system governance: A systematic review. Health Policy and Planning, 32(5), 710722. Web.
Wiedower, J. (2016). Information technology governance: Vital to healthcare systems. Web.
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