AHRQ: Improving Healthcare Quality Through Research & Data - Essay Sample

Introduction

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) is a U.S federal government agency that operates as an integral facet of the Department of Health & Human Services to support research aimed at improving the overall quality of health care. The agency develops the framework and data needed to help health care professionals, patients, and policymakers make informed health decisions. One way through which AHRQ achieves its objective is through continually developing health care information systems. The system helps in managing health care data, including collecting, storing, and transmitting patient's medical record, health care management, as well as supporting policy decisions (AHRQ Digital Healthcare Research, 2014).

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AHRQ plays a central role in acquiring and implementing health care information systems in different health care centers. Firstly, advocates for a collaborative approach when developing health care information systems. Thus, it ensures that specialists in various fields are involved in throughout the SDLC process. For instance, AHRQ was pivotal in implementing a system that improves provider communication as a patient transition from a hospital to a rural primary care setting in Billing Hospital (AHRQ Digital Healthcare Research, 2014). Moreover, the agency also facilitates the acquisition of health care information systems through funding various health care institutions. Besides, it conducts research to assess whether the proposed system to be acquired is viable or not.

Alternatives to Alleviate Major Concerns

Many concerns were identified when acquiring the new health care system. First, there were no enough radiologists personnel in the hospital setting. Markedly, this can be solved by hiring new radiologists. The facility can request AHRQ to fund them to recruit radiologists. The other concern entailed managing mentally ill patients remotely. This challenge can be overcome by liaising with rural medical health care facilities to track the progress of the patient. Markedly, this can easily be achieved remotely through leveraging telemedicine.

Value Addition Realized From Acquiring the Proposed Health Care Information System

Acquiring a new system will save time since less time will be spent on developing a similar system. This is in the light that it is aimed at offering the same services. Secondly, it is cost-effective to acquire an already developed system than to create one from scratch. Also, the health facility will benefit from the experience previously gained by users of the system. Thus, this will make it easy to train users of the newly acquired health information system.

Application of the SDLC (Decision-Making Model) In the Health Care IT Systems Acquisition

Software development life cycle (SDLC) refers to the process of developing and deploying software (Ruparelia, 2010). It involves several steps; data requirement collection, feasibility study, design, coding, testing, implementation, and maintenance.

The system requirement collection and gathering is the initial stage during, and it entails collecting data from the various stakeholders (Ruparelia, 2010). In the acquired system, this involved gathering data from patients and health care specialists such as clinicians, nurses, and doctors. The next step involved assessing whether the system is feasible. A team led by a risk assessment officer evaluated the proposed system and found out that it was feasible. The analysis involved economic, operational, legal, and economical feasibility. The third step is the design phase, and it aims at transforming the analyzed data into a logical design (Ruparelia, 2010). A system analyst was hired to help in designing the new system. Next is the coding phase, which specifically dealt with programming the system. The language used to code was PHP while MySQL was used to create the database. This was followed by testing the functionalities of the new system to ensure that they confirmed with the specifications required. Afterwards, the system was deployed where it undergoes continuous maintenance.

Usability

Usability refers to the quality of the user experience when using the software (Nielsen, 2015). The acquired system has a good graphical user interface (GUI). For instance, it is easy to search for data in the system. Again, the user interface is intuitive. Thus, many of the elements used in the UI are easily understandable since they are familiar. Besides, it is also responsive since it works fast without lagging (Nielsen, 2015). More importantly, the design of the UI is attractive and user friendly since it effectively satisfies the needs of the end-user users.

Benefits of System Acquisition

Several benefits are realized by acquiring the proposed health care information system. For instance, it has increased accesses to care. Unlike before, when patients were limited by distance and travel time, the new system ensures that patients have access to specialized health care providers without physically meeting them. Besides, it had led to improved quality of care delivery. Studies have shown that offering telemedicine health care services leads to few hospital admissions and re-admissions. Importantly, it reduces healthcare costs by minimizing expenses incurred when transporting the patient to the health care facility or keeping the patient in the hospital. Finally, the new system improves patient engagement, which leads to satisfaction. This is .because it is specialist providers offer real-time care to patients conveniently and flexibly.

Finally, the acquisition and implementation of the software will significantly impact my final project proposal. For instance, it has given me a lot of insight regarding implementing the process involved when acquiring implementing a software system. For instance, I am now cognizant of the importance of first conducting the feasibility study to understand whether the new system is feasible or not. Also, it has helped me learn the importance of having to develop a timeframe and budget plan when developing software.

References

AHRQ Digital Healthcare Research. (2014). Health IT Success: Improving Provider Communication to Improve Transitions in Patient Care. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGeVGXXK3ao

Nielsen, J. (2015). Ten usability heuristics.. In Conference companion on Human factors in computing systems (pp. 413-414).

Ruparelia, N. B. (2010). Software development lifecycle models. ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes, 35(3), 8-13.