Essay Sample on Technologies in Healthcare

Introduction

A patient's visit workflow takes place in two sections as follows. The first section entails appointment scheduling. The patient coming in to seek an appointment is received by the receptionist and determined whether, a new patient or making a subsequent visit. If the patient is coming in for the very first time, the receptionist creates a new record in the electronic system and enters the patient's information such as name, date of birth, insurance provider information, emergency contacts, address, age, and the patient's identification number. In case of a patient reporting for an appointment, the receptionist searches their previously registered details in the system. The receptionist then selects the relevant provider and opens an appointment schedule for the patient (Alexander, 2017).

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The receptionist inquires and selects the reason or type of an appointment required by the patient, then looks for the specific date for appointment. Suppose an appointment opportunity is available at the time of visit, the receptionist issues a verbal summary for the appointment or issues an appointment card thereby and finishes up the appointment schedule. The patient can then proceed to either receive the treatment or wait for the scheduled appointment date.

The appointments scheduling section is carried out by the receptionist at the clinic's reception desk. The process requires a high level of friendliness and hospitality to the patient. Apart from that, the receptionist should conduct the activity very fast and find out if the patient has some special needs to consider such as emerging issues and other special medical cases. Patients should be handled honorably and their needs addressed within the shortest period possible to avoid unnecessary inconveniences.The second part of the patients visits workflow occurs when the patient has already secured an appointment and therefore, comes in for the actual medical treatment. The returning patient arrives and checks in at the reception desk to start the process. Immediately, the receptionist receives the incoming patient, views the EHR schedule and the patient's status. The receptionist determines if the patient needs an emergency medical attention and gives the direction appropriately.

Once the patient has been received, the receptionist alerts the nurse that the patient has arrived so that the patient can be given the opportunity to obtain the medical attention (Alexander, 2017). The receptionist then escorts the patient to the examination room where the physician conducts a physical examination, laboratory testing, radiologic testing or any other medical tests deemed appropriate by the physician. The measurements obtained by the physician includes weight, height, temperature, blood pressure, and many others.

During the time a patient is being attended to in the examination room, the nurse reviews the patient's complaints, and obtains significant signs and symptoms of the patient and enters the main complaint presented by the patient and other associated data. The nurse then verifies and records the allergies and current medications of the patient. When the nurse is done, the physician carries on with further examination of the patient to come up with appropriate orders such as medications, radiology, laboratory, and referrals at the end of the encounter. This includes prescription drugs. The nurse then facilitates scheduling of the appropriate orders such as radiology, laboratory, and medical prescriptions.

Upon the completion of radiological or laboratory tests, the results are printed out in the clinic's printer and placed in the patient's management chart. The patient is then called and given the result, whether the abnormal or normal outcome is realized. Suppose the patient needs prescriptions refilled, they go back to the receptionist who after receiving the inquiry, prepares a written note and takes it to the nurse's station for consideration. The nurse adds the submitted note to the patient's health chart and drops it inside the bin so that the physician would review it later. When the physician has written down the refill prescription, it is returned to the bin where the nurse takes it and contacts both the patient and the pharmacy.

The following are the key problems encountered in this workflow. First, patients always complain about the boredom of filling the forms of registration and history of health every time they report to the clinic (Alexander, 2017). This is especially wasted patients' time and adds more load unto them. Patients have to wait in lines to be ushered into the system due to the slow paperwork imposed by the difficulty to go through a sea of papers manually to obtain the health details for a single patient (Friedberg, 2013).

The papers become bulky and may easily get lost thereby, losing crucial information required for proper service delivery. The clinical staff spends a lot of time searching the required health details of particular patients. As a result, there is slow progress of work at the clinic that causes a lot of time wastage alongside the associated boredom while going through the treatment process.

Nurses have serious difficulties in reading physicians' handwritings; this can cause errors while transcribing orders. Therefore, patients are at risk of receiving irrelevant prescription drugs that are inconsistent with their illnesses leading to further complications. In addition to that, nurses find it difficult and time-consuming sorting through numerous radiology and laboratory results sheets. Moreover, they spend a long time checking drug allergies in patients to validate compatible prescriptions. Patients often lose paper prescriptions issued at the clinic thereby, adding to the frustration of nurses as they have to recover the details from a large mass of health records.

The physicians also complain of the poor system of communication since they are hardly informed if their patients have been admitted either for emergency services or hospitals. On the other hand, the staff at the emergency room also complains of lacking access to outpatient records or getting access to the patient's health history which is important for consistent health care and determination of the best means of treating patients (Friedberg, 2013). Furthermore, patients have to travel from their homes to hospitals for routine health monitoring including tracking the blood sugar level, adherence to a diet, weight, among others. The workflow does not allow for quick communication of such information. Hence, patients have to go to the clinic to access such services and even their medical records for review at home.

The metric for measuring soundness of this workflow is the total number of patients that have completed the process. According to Elsevier (2018), the metric is not sufficient since it does not consider the quality of service delivered to patients including the time taken to deliver some processes. In addition to that, despite having a large number of patients served per day, there is still a lot of considerations to account for. Therefore, the workflow is applicable but not efficient and effective for patients' service.

In this workflow, the change in technology use would instill great efficiency and effectiveness. The paper-based service delivery pose numerous problems that consequently leads to unnecessary frustrations of the clinical staff as well as time wastages to the patients seeking medical attention. The use of computers to manage patient's health records would simplify the process by enhancing simple and speedy monitoring, storage and retrieval of health databases thereby making work easier for the clinical staff (Friedberg, 2013). Additionally, computerized health service delivery is key to orderliness in handling patients. It becomes very easy to assess the patient's health status in relation to their historical health background information that can be easily stored and retrieved by the computer.

Conclusion

In conclusion, being aware of the flow of activities is important because of the following reasons. First, it helps to discharge activities in an orderly manner to avoid confusion (Friedberg, 2013). Workflows help the clinical staff to know which process to be conducted first and what to follow thereby enhancing proper coordination of activities to achieve the goal within a reasonable period.

In addition to that, knowing the flow of activities helps in identifying tasks that slow down the whole process. Hence, appropriate measures can be designed and implemented to offset the process from the unnecessary delay. The workflow also helps in knowing the systematic flow of processes or activities and the people responsible for performing such tasks. Therefore, it allows everyone to play their roles in the process effectively without bumping into another person's duty. As a result, it brings peace and order among the staff members while discharging their duties.

References

Alexander, S., Hoy, H. M., & In Frith, K. H. (2017). Applied clinical informatics for nurses. Burlington: Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Bali, R. K. (2013). Pervasive health knowledge management. New York, NY: Springer.

Elsevier, (2018). Simchart For The Medical Office 2019: Learning the medical office workflow. S.l.: ELSEVIER.

Friedberg, M. W., RAND Health., Rand Corporation., & American Medical Association. (2013). Factors affecting physician professional satisfaction and their implications for patient care, health systems, and health policy. Santa Monica, CA: Rand Health, American Medical Association.

Osheroff, J. A. (2012). Improving outcomes with clinical decision support: An implementer's guide. Chicago, IL: Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society.