St Cuthbert’s Healthcare Case Study

St Cuthbert’s Healthcare Case Study

St Cuthbert’s healthcare owns and runs 3 medium sized, private, not for profit, hospital facilities in urban areas around Australia; comprising a total of 500 hospital beds. More than 830 medical specialists are accredited to practice at the hospitals and FTE staff numbers average 700 per year. Services include routine medical and clinical services, maternity, rehabilitation and mental health. In addition to hospital admission they offer home nursing, disability services and social outreach programs. Their mission is to inspire hope and contribute to health and well-being by providing compassionate care to everyone, touching all aspects of their life (physical, emotional, intellectual, social and spiritual). Patients attend the hospitals for day surgery and treatments and overnight admissions. Patients can be admitted to the hospital from doctor/specialist referral or by hospital transfer and are allocated beds upon arrival. Patient flow is an important part of the admission and discharge procedures. Patients are given estimates of the costs before admittance and payers/patients are billed at discharge.

“The Australian healthcare system generates large amounts of data from public and private clinical and non-clinical sources.  The lack of connectivity across healthcare services has resulted in significant impacts on the quality of care and patient safety (Alcidion.com).

There is general agreement at St Cuthbert’s Healthcare for the need to invest in technology to collect and analyse patient information in order to improve patient outcomes and meet stakeholder requirements. There are many different clinical information systems used in the hospitals, for instance patients are admitted to hospital using an electronic patient administration system (PAS) which was installed in each hospital in 2002; CareStream radiology is used for diagnostic imaging; pathology and test results are usually received by email from the patient’s doctor or pathology provider. Paper based observation records are used in all the hospitals and kept with the patient while they are in hospital, and later stored in the patient’s file.

You are required to construct a business case for a technology solution that will help St Cuthbert’s Healthcare in WA manage and analyse the data it collects. The technology you select for the business case has to align with the hospital’s strategic objectives.

This involves Part 1:

x Conducting an environmental scan of the healthcare sector with an emphasis on issues affecting hospitals and patients in Australia (market conditions and competitive environment).

x Considering the hospital’s mission and strategy; x Identifying and assessing stakeholder concerns;

x Isolating a problem and evaluating opportunities for IT at St. Cuthbert’s;

x Researching an IT solution to solve the problem(s) – to innovate practice and/or improve processes at the hospital;

x Evaluating different solutions to the problem, shortlisting the options and selecting the “best solution.Part 2:

x Expanding on work done in Part 1 x Constructing a detailed business plan for investment in the IT solution chosen.

You are “selling the IT solution to the hospital’s Board of Directors. The business plan must make a compelling argument for the Board to support and invest in the technology.