Case Study Part 1 Good Health Clinic Introduction In 2010 cardiologists Tim Jones and Daniella Smith decided to combine their practices to form a new clinic. They wanted to concentrate on preventative medicine by helping patients maintain their health and fitness along with providing traditional medical care. A nutritionist, Tom Wilson, also joined the practice. In 2013, Mary Wu, joined the group as a physical therapist and the entire practice moved its offices to a location near a large shopping centre closer to the middle of the city. Background Currently the practice has 4 doctors, 3 registered nurses, 4 physical therapists and 6 office staff workers. All 4 doctors are partners in the business. The other members are employees under their various awards and are paid as employees. They are all permanent employees, not casual. It currently has a customer base of 3,500 patients. About a 3rd of the patients have private health insurance which covers them for wellness and health programs. The practice deals with around 10 private health insurers. Julie Wilson, who has been with New Century since it first started, is the office manager. She supervises the office staff including Fred Brown who handles office payroll, basic accounts and income distributions to partners. Susan Jackson is responsible for maintenance of patient records. Most of the paperwork associated with insurer claims and accounts is handled by Lisa Forsythe. Jenny Robinson has primary responsibility for the appointment book including making reminder calls to patients and preparing daily appointment lists for the doctors and therapists. Carla Sims has the primary responsibilities for ordering and organising the clinic supplies and office supplies. All 6 of the office staff have one or more primary responsibilities but they all help out whenever it’s necessary. In addition to their regular duties, all 6 office staff help out with preparing end of month accounts and reports. Activity 1 1.Use the background information to create a short summary (one short paragraph) about the Good Health Clinic. 2.Create an organisation chart for the Good Health Clinic. 3.Use the information above to describe the area of the organisation under study (i.e. the business’ functions that will be handled by the new information system). 4.Add the background information, organisation chart, and business functions to your Report document in Part A: Initial Investigation. There are examples of each of the things listed above in the text. However, make sure you do some other research. Use internet searches to find other examples and to look for examples that could use to help you construct the things you need. Case Study Part 2 Issues Julie Wilson recently asked for permission to employ an additional office clerk because she feels the current staff can no longer handle the increasing workload. The partners discussed the request during a recent meeting. They were not surprised that the office staff were feeling overwhelmed by the constantly increasing workload. Because the practice was busier and more profitable than it had ever been, they all agreed that the practice could afford to hire another office worker. However, during the meeting, it was suggested that they could investigate the computerisation of the office systems. A computerised system could keep track of patients, appointments, charges, insurance claims processing, and accounts and reduce paperwork. All the partners were enthusiastic about the project and voted to follow-up on the suggestion. Because no one on staff had any computer experience, Tim Jones and Daniella Smith decided to hire a consultant (you) to study the current office systems and recommend a course of action. Activity 2 1.Either by yourself or with another class member, brainstorm all the functions that the Good Health Clinic might require. Keep it at a very high level. 2.Prepare a draft System Vision Document for the new information system for the Clinic. This system vision document will be revised when you find out more about the requirements for the system. An example system vision document can be seen in Figure 1.8 of your textbook (Figure 1.5 in the 6th ed). 3.Add your system vision document to your report document in Part A: Initial Investigation. You have been given a little information about what is required but there are a lot of gaps. You are expected to fill these gaps to work out details and additional information that is needed. This also gives you some latitude to explore health clinics and their operations as they apply to your background and experience. Make sure you explore other vision documents and know how they are worded and what needs to be expressed in them so that an organisations knows where it is headed and what it is trying to achieve. Case Study Part 3 Fact Finding And System Requirements The doctors, nurses and therapists provide services and perform various medical procedures. All procedures are coded according to the international Current Procedure Terminology (CTP) which is published by various medical associations. The procedure codes consist of 5 numeric digits and a 2 digit suffix (1234-12) and are used for all billing and medical claims. There are 7 reports required at the practice that are generated from the office. The 1st report is the daily appointment list for each provider. This list shows all scheduled appointment times, patient names and services to be performed including the procedure code and description. The 2nd daily report is the call list that shows the patients who are to be reminded of their next day’s appointments. The call lust includes the patient name, telephone number, appointment time and provider name. The 3rd report is the weekly provider report that lists each of the providers and the weekly charges generated, plus a month-to-date (MTD) and year-to-date (YTD) summary. The 4th report is the statement – a pre-printed form that is produced monthly and handed to patients as they leave the clinic. Statement header information includes the statement date, patient name and address, procedure charges, procedure provider, payment due and any outstanding payments owing. The bottom section of the statement includes details of procedures and their individual charges. Each procedure is listed on a separate line with a separate cost that are totalled for each statement. The statement also shows the totals of any refunds received from a private insurer which is deducted from the amount outstanding. Some patients are given the option to pay their accounts in instalments. The statements list any instalments paid as well. The associates also require 2 insurance reports: the weekly insurance company report and the monthly claim status summary. Some insurers can take up to 60 days to remit funds to the practice after a claim has been submitted by the practice. In addition to these 6 reports, the office staff would also like to be able to print mailing labels and appointment cards to send to patients when it’s time to remind them of their next appointment. They would also like a system that will generate emails and/or texts to patients as reminders or just for general information. Alternatives And Strategies At the end of the fact finding and analysis, it’s time to prepare a systems requirement document and give a presentation to the associates. The proposed system’s advantages were established during the fact finding. The benefits that are expected to result from the system are smoother operation, better efficiency and more user-friendly procedures for staff and patients. It’s also time to examine the costs and benefits to determine the economic feasibility of several alternatives. If the practice decides to go ahead with the development process, the main options are to develop the system in-house or purchase a vertical package and configure it to manage the practice’s specific needs. The current workload requires at least 3 hours of overtime for each office staff member per week. Some weeks the office staff spend up to 12 hours overtime catching up on various tasks. As well, based on current projections, it will also be necessary to add another full-time office staff member within 6 months. Neither the overtime nor the new position will be needed if the new system is implemented. However, the current manual system also causes an average of 3 errors per day and each error takes about 20 minutes to correct. The new system should eliminate these errors. It’s been estimated that the project can be completed in 12 weeks working full-time. The consulting rate, which the practice has agreed to, is $240 per hour. If the new system is designed from scratch you can expect to spend around $3000 for a commercial DBMS system. After the system is implemented and the staff have been trained, they should be able to handle routine system maintenance tasks without the assistance of a consultant. As an alternative to in-house development, a vertical software package is available for about $10,000. The vendor has terms requiring an initial payment of $3,000 following by a 2nd annual payment of $4,000 and a final annual payment of $3,000. If the practice decides to purchase this package it will take around 4 weeks to install, configure and test. The vendor provides free support during the 1st year but then the practice must sign a technical support agreement at an annual cost of $2500. Although the package has most of the features that the practice wants, the reports are all pre-configured and altering them would be difficult and expensive. Regardless of which option is required there would be approximately 10 hours of training required which would be delivered by an external person at a cost of $250 per hour. The practice also expects that there will be ongoing support needed for each option over the 1st 3 months of installation. This would be to deal with any problems and general trouble shooting that would be an additional cost. The general housekeeping functions of each system, backup, maintenance, updates and so on could all be handled by one of the office staff members but is estimated to require around 4 hours per week. It is expected that there would be a useful life of around 5 years for each system. It is expected that installation of hardware and software would be $10,000 for each system. This includes cabling and incidental hardware including multi-function printers. Activity 3 1.Create a table, listing all tasks separately, with their duration; 2.Identify all dependencies, and indicate what predecessor tasks are required; 3.Construct a Gantt chart in Microsoft Project or other project management software; 4.Identify the PERT/CPM chart in the software, and identify the critical path; 5.Determine the overall duration of the project; 6.Take clear screenshots of the Gantt chart and PERT/CPM chart and paste into your Report document in Part A: Initial Investigation under Project Management. 7.Include the overall duration and critical path in your report. You will have to think outside the square here and make sure that you cover the tasks needed. As well, you need to make sure that the tasks are at an appropriate level of detail to enable you to make an informed and professional decision about how long the project will take.