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Case Study 18

Case Study #18:


Assessing the Value of Health IT Investment
Major Themes:
Value Assessment
Sarah Marquez
HTM 660
May 17, 2014

Case Study 18

Southeast Medical Center is in the process of transitioning to a


new EHR system. There old system Easy Doc did not interface with the
hospital clinical applications, and leaders were concerned that the system
was not going to achieve meaningful use criteria (Wager 635). The new
systems that the hospital plans to acquire is Epic ambulatory care EHR and
Epics practice management application. They also have plans to replace
clinical applications with Epic in the inpatient sector as well. It will be an
overall interoperable system that will connect patients records with all
systems. The primary purpose of the Epic EHR project is to provide clinicians
access to a single, complete electronic health record that spans the patients
continuum of care and improves collaboration and coordination of care,
community providers and patients will have access to the system (Wagner
635). This would expand their overall interface and more effectively manage
patient care and quality outcomes. Expansions would also include the use of
a data warehouse.
To determine the value of the Southeast investment in the Epic
outpatient and inpatient systems and the expansion of its use of the data
warehouse would require an analysis of many variables. Assessing the value
of the aggregate IT investment is different from assessing the value of a
single initiative or other specific investment (Wagner 588). In order to
determine the value I would look at and measure the tangible and intangible
value metrics of the overall systems. The departments that would be
involved would be the IT department and probably the CFO. Also any other

Case Study 18

leadership departments involved. After assessment of value you would be


able to know if change occurred because of the implementation of the EHR
or the expansion of the use of the data warehouse by looking at all factors
that may have contributed to a change. It would be a complicated decision to
make because of all the factors that would be involved to make the decision.
Healthcare organization leaders often feel ill equipped to address the IT
investment and value challenge (Wagner 591). Lastly, most project proposals
should be subjected to formal financial analyses regardless of their value
proposition (Wagner 566). I do think in this case that traditional return on
investment methods would be extremely useful in this case. This would be
because given the amount if the investment and its promised cash, you
would want to know the rate of return that Southeast would be getting on
the investment. If the cash generated exceeds the initial investment by a
certain amount or percentage, the Southeast may conclude that the IT
investment is a good one (Wagner 566).

Case Study 18

Reference
Wager, K. (2013). Health care information systems. (3rd ed.). San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass A Wiley Brand.

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