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Running head: MANAGEMENT OVERVIEW

Management Overview

Ermias Habte

University of San Diego


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Organization Chart

According to the profile of Heartland Health, the health care organization consists of two

primary care offices. (Heartland North and Heartland South). Staff members at these two

locations include one physician leader, one medical doctor, two nurse practitioners, four medical

assistants, two receptionists, one health informatics technician and a part-time biller. The single

physician leader manages one location and one of the nurse practitioners manages the other

location. Figure 1-1 shows Heartland Health’s Organizational Chart.

Physician Leader

Medical Doctor

Health
Heartland North Informatics Front Office Heartland South
Technician

Nurse Practitioner
Nurse Practitioner 2 receptionists (Location
manager)

2 Medical 2 Medical
Part-time biller
Assistants Assistants

Figure 1-1 Heartland Health Organizational Chart

When it comes to implementing an Electronic Health Records (EHR) system in a smaller

organization like Heartland Health, all staff members from the Physician Leader all the way

down have to participate. With only a total of 12 staff members in the whole organization, the

chances are everyone will be affected with a new EHR system. Therefore, even though the
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decision-making process will fall on the desk of upper management, it is essential that

everyone’s input is considered especially in the implementation process. This will keep

everyone engaged and the feeling of ownership will inspire maximum effort.

As far as the actual review and approval of the EHR system, that should include the

Physician Leader, the Medical Doctor, and the two Nurse Practitioners. These individuals are

the staff members that review patient health history, write prescriptions and diagnose the patient.

Therefore, they should be part of the review and approval process being that they will be directly

affected by the implementation of an EHR system. After taking into consideration these

individuals’ inputs, the final yes or no decision should be made by the physician leader.

Objective

The objective of this major change is to provide improved health care and patient safety

by implementing an EHR system. This EHR system will accomplish this by eliminating paper

work that contains highly sensitive patient information that are currently stored in cabinets and

receptionists’ desks. These paper charts have been very inconvenient and have impacted patient

care negatively due to having to search for them all over the office. An EHR system will

minimize that if not get rid of it all together. Another way EHR will improve health care and

patient safety is by sharing patient history and prescriptions electronically. This will eliminate

possible misreading of ineligible handwritings and faxes.

Action Plan

Upon the approval of the Electronic Health Record system, there needs to be a designated

leader for each location that will oversee the implementation efforts. For this, we will enlist the

Medical Doctor at Heartland North and the Nurse Practitioner (Location Manager) at Heartland
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South. The contact point for the vendor installing the EHR system will be the Health Informatics

Technician. Lastly, every patient must be presented with information outlining the upgrade and

the benefits of EHR to the patient. This will put the patient’s mind at ease during the

implementation period and going forward.

SWOT Analysis

 Strengths

o Ease of use

o Minimize paper work

o Convenient and more accurate access to patient history and prescriptions

o Improved productivity

 Weaknesses

o Training time will take staff members off the floor

o Pushback from staff members that may be against the change

 Opportunities

o Possibly expanding and accepting new patients

o Improving security to protect cyber attacks

o Government incentives for using EHR

 Threats

o Possible cyber attacks

o Software or hardware issues making patient information inaccessible


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References

Baker, J. J., Baker, R. W., & Dworkin, N. R. (2018). Health care finance: basic tools for

nonfinancial managers. Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.

Heartland Health Profile. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://ole.sandiego.edu/bbcswebdav/pid-

1063344-dt-content-rid-4454544_1/courses/ENLC-553-

MASTER/M2/M2_Heartland_Health.pdf

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