MANAGEMENT ACTIVITY SYSTEM

Management Activity System for Hospitals

Management Activity System for Hospitals

Introduction

Since the last three decades, there have been significant changes and innovation brought in the execution of health information system. However, the changes and innovation have resulted in both successful and failed performances. As an effective and successful health information system is dependent on the respective health system, it is significant to look at the developments which have been taking place in the healthcare sector. The changes and developments will enforce additional demands on the health care systems, which will possibly affect the health information systems. The Management Activity System will be affected by additional sources of data and prospective for the development of policies

Flow of Hospitals' Operations

The fundamental operation of Royal Victorian Hospital is to provide diagnosis and treatment to patients. The medications supplied are prescribed by doctors to both in-patients and emergency patients. There are other functions as well, which hospitals and pharmacies perform such as record keeping, answering patients' queries related to drugs, obtaining clarifications on drug orders, filling prescriptions for outpatients, answering telephone calls etc. It is the primary objective of hospitals to manage healthcare activities and information and provide drug orders with minimum errors and delays (AbouZahr & Boerma 2005, Pp. 478-483). However, there is a conflict between the two goals. To minimize errors, hospitals usually use a complex procedure of checks. Doctors need to check the orders once they get filled by technicians. This is done to ensure there are no or minimum errors. In case of an error, it will be difficult to estimate the economic cost if the error takes place.

This is because hospitals treat humans, and it will be impossible to determine the economic cost of a death of a patient due to a drug filling error. Therefore, it remains a priority for pharmacy management to ensure there are no errors, leading to economic cost issues or death of a patient. As a result of the stated objectives of minimizing errors, it becomes essential to review the performance based on targets. The operations of hospitals demand elaborated precautionary measures to ensure there are no deviations from the targets. Therefore, such critical measures differentiate hospitals' performance measures from other systems. Elsewhere, deviations from targets remain undesirable. However, such deviations are not always unacceptable (De Vries 2003, pp. 139-151). Since the last decade or so, the hospital operations have become computerized to some extent. This system incorporates a database system which creates records and profiles of in-patients (patients who are admitted to a hospital). This database labels the medications for each patient, which helps in retrieving information about the patient's drug history. This is called a patient's profile (De Kadt 1989, pp. 203-314).

Simulation models are also used which are related to such scenarios. In case of pharmacies in a hospital, they deal with two types of orders. The first type of order is called a critical order, which is related to medications for emergency ...