NURS FPX 8012 Assessment 3 SAFER Guides and Evaluating Technology Usage

Name

Capella university

NURS-FPX 8012 Nursing Technology and Health Care Information Systems

Prof. Name

Date

SAFER Guides and Evaluating Technology Usage

Technology and Informatics have been established as an imperative in the current healthcare systems. They are pivotal in improving patient care, healthcare system quality, and regulatory compliance, including the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the CURES Act. This paper primarily aims to discuss the results from the SAFER Guides, an instrument used to enhance Electronic Health Records (EHRs) functionality and advance safer care delivery.

Based on the previous evaluation considering telehealth and informatics’ contribution to chronic disease care enhancement, this assessment highlights advanced technological supporting structures as critical components that favor patient safety and information security. This paper analyses the SAFER Guides to obtain insights on how healthcare practices could be made to match those recommended in the informatics field. Finally, this reflection outlines how technology solutions improve patients’ treatment and increase the capabilities of regulatory requirements within a contemporary healthcare system.

Description of Proposed Technology/Informatics

The proposed technology for implementation at Kaiser Foundation Hospital in Oakland, California, is telehealth, specifically online consultations integrated with EHRs. This technology can address key areas for improvement identified in previous assessments, including the Responsiveness of Hospital Staff and Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) Infection Rates, while also enhancing Timely and Effective Care measures. Telehealth can increase the responsiveness of hospital staff by allowing health consumers to take charge of their treatment by using means such as embracing telecommunications. It will enable them to consult their caregivers independently and decrease the time spent waiting for a response from hospital staff.

A study by Haleem et al. (2021) shows that telehealth lessens response time to less severe conditions that require immediate or early attention. This means that telehealth lowers the physical requirement for visitations, which increases the likelihood of contracting Hospital Acquired Infections (HAIs) such as MRSA infection rates by restricting contact with hospital settings. Shokri et al. (2023) proved that virtual consultations and home monitoring can minimize cross-contamination and the consequences of its effects, in value for infection control directly. In addition, it improves timely and effective care by eliminating barriers associated with follow-up and waiting time for care delivery. Telehealth integration with EHRs puts the care teams in harmony in their referral of the patient to all relevant caregivers.

 In chronic illness and postoperative or convalescent scenarios, the usual advantages of telehealth include the early detection of complications, thus minimizing mortality and hospital readmissions (Williams & Shang, 2023). Preliminary goals for improvement through telehealth implementation include implementing telehealth to enhance the hospital’s Medicare scores in timely and effective care by reducing patient wait times, improving responsiveness through faster communication, and optimizing care delivery. It also seeks to lower infection rates by minimizing unnecessary physical visits and improving patient outcomes through proactive chronic disease management and effective care coordination.

SAFER Guides Findings: Performance Areas

The Kaiser Foundation Hospital in Oakland, California, demonstrates strong performance in key areas outlined by the SAFER Guides, particularly in System Interfaces, Clinical Communication, Test Results Reporting, and Follow-up related to telehealth implementation. Under the System Interfaces subheading, the mobility of telehealth systems with the hospital’s EHR platform is well illustrated to depict how the platform interfaces with other systems without technical hitches.

SAFER Guides assessment revealed that all features under this domain were classified as “Fully” in all areas – this also refers to the highly developed framework and corporate commitment to the concept of interoperability. For instance, telehealth consultations are captured in the center, enabling providers in different specialties to view the patient records in real-time or not as a unified electronic document (Zhang & Saltman, 2021).

Hospitals have improved in the clinical communication section, where the hospital achieved an impressive high in terms of timely and accurate telecommunication between patients and providers. The proposed and applied SAFER model findings pinpoint that the telehealth platform encompasses secure messaging, video conferencing, and automated appointment reminders, increasing patient satisfaction and decreasing response time. This aligns with past evaluations concluding that telehealth interventions have improved the systems’ proactive approach because patients can seek consultations for minor but pressing issues at any time. 

NURS FPX 8012 Assessment 3 SAFER Guides and Evaluating Technology Usage

In addition, the hospital performs well in the Contingency Planning SAFER domain by ensuring that telehealth services are online during system failures. Issues of proper and frequent audits and backup systems were mentioned as the key success factors pointing to the hospital’s preparedness to continue uninterrupted care provision. These results corroborate with the industry’s telemedicine benchmarks and affirm the hospital’s capacity to deliver quality telemedicine capabilities to enhance the safety quotient of the patients.

Moreover, the results for the domain concerning “Test Results Reporting and Follow-up” were found to conform to the criteria “Fully implemented.” Consecutive patients got timely message notifications and follow-up messages on the outcome of their tests after virtual consultations (Tang et al., 2022). This ensures that patients and clinicians are equally informed as and when needed to aid in care decisions. Such efficiency is paramount, especially when dealing with chronic ailments while discouraging care complications and facilitating better patient results (Zhang & Saltman, 2021).

SAFER Guides Findings: Risks and Areas of Improvements Identified 

For Kaiser Foundation Hospital in Oakland, California, the telehealth implementation SAFER Guides evaluation yielded the following risks and recommendations: Still worth mentioning are some critical issues identified within the System Interfaces domain and according to which such an element was rated as ‘Partially in some areas’ in terms of interacting with this specific external system.

Even though the hospital’s telehealth platform works well with the hospital’s own EHR system, the major issue is integrating data from external providers or community health systems. There is also the limitation of potential delays in care coordination, especially where the patient needs services from practitioners outside the hospital’s health system. Interoperability is incomplete when patients switch from one healthcare system to another – and as pointed out by Ndlovu et al. (2021), such a situation hampers coordination of care. It raises the likelihood of adverse health events.

The SAFER Guides Contingency Planning domain pointed to risks in telehealth, such as the lack of end-to-end encryption of patients’ communications with providers, which is rated as “Not implemented” and relates to breaches of data and HIPAA compliance. Moreover, responses regarding the reliability of the accommodated systems during outages or technical failures indicated that existing redundancy was only partially in some areas; backups are essential to avoid delays in urgent care. Such challenges threaten patient confidence and satisfaction since cybersecurity threats and service disruption affect the viability of telehealth (Ansarian & Baharlouei, 2023; Haleem et al., 2021).

The SAFER Guides flagged gaps in the Patient Identification domain, with findings rated as “Partially in some areas.” Specifically, while electronic systems exist for identifying patients, some telehealth workflows lack consistent, reliable methods for confirming patient identity across virtual consultations. This creates risks for errors in care delivery, such as misidentifying patients during online consultations. Accurate patient identification is critical for ensuring the right treatment at the right time, especially in telehealth settings where in-person verification is impossible (Popescu et al., 2022).

Reflection on Using SAFER Guides

Using the SAFER Guides to identify risks and prioritize improvement efforts was interesting and engaging. It created a guideline by which certain vital domains that telehealth needs to be enhanced can be evaluated; these include encryption, contingency planning, and telehealth-clinical systems interface. From this evaluation, I moved to a higher level of analysis, looking at the effects of information technological systems on patient safety, care delivery, and the ability to meet compliance standards such as HIPAA on patients, staff, and care procedures. It allowed me to move from conceptualizing the first steps of telehealth deployment to paying attention to potential holes, such as a lack of data security or partial integration of telehealth platforms with clinical systems.

The experience has had the most profound impact on the function of technology in health care. It underlined the need to check the system constantly and optimize it as necessary. While the systems must work, they must also be secure, reliable, and relevant to the patient’s needs. Ethically, I will be in a better position to incorporate technology in my future practice; in my practice, I shall embrace technology without blindness to its vulnerabilities. I will be as better placed to demand changes after getting acquainted with the effect of my actions on other patients and the impact of the proposed change on the quality of patient care and safety. I will continuously embrace research-based analysis to improve healthcare delivery based on clinical practice.

Conclusion

In conclusion, applying SAFER Guides to describe the implementation of telehealth at Kaiser Foundation Hospital has demonstrated the best functions of the technology integration and the opportunities for innovation improvement. Thus, the hospital’s performance regarding clinical communication and system interfaces is well above average but expresses risks for data security issues- patients and the interface with systems of other organizations.

The mentioned gaps are explicitly outlined and point to feasible areas of development, such as improving encryption standards, optimizing the approach to patient identification, and conforming the integration with other health information systems. It is my understanding and the result of this evaluation that in further work with the implementation of technology, it is necessary to identify potential dangers and follow the requirements of the law so that the results would be effective and safe for patients. Conveying and reviewing telehealth platforms to form their respective telehealth need associations, I can assist with increasing the effectiveness and security of those in the healthcare sector.

References

Ansarian, M., & Baharlouei, Z. (2023). Applications and challenges of telemedicine: Privacy-preservation as a case study. Archives of Iranian Medicine, 26(11), 654–661. https://doi.org/10.34172/aim.2023.96 

Haleem, A., Javaid, M., Singh, R. P., & Suman, R. (2021). Telemedicine for healthcare: Capabilities, features, barriers, and applications. Sensors International, 2(2), 100–117. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sintl.2021.100117 

NURS FPX 8012 Assessment 3 SAFER Guides and Evaluating Technology Usage

Ndlovu, K., Scott, R. E., & Mars, M. (2021). Interoperability opportunities and challenges in linking mhealth applications and eRecord systems: Botswana as an exemplar. BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making, 21(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12911-021-01606-7 

Popescu, C., Chaarani, H. E., Abiad, Z. E., & Gigauri, I. (2022). Implementation of health information systems to improve patient identification. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 19(22). https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph192215236 

Shokri, F., Bahrainian, S., Tajik, F., Rezvani, E., Shariati, A., Nourigheimasi, S., Shahrebabaki, E. S., Ebrahimi, M., Shamoon, F., & Heidary, M. (2023). The potential role of telemedicine in the infectious disease pandemic with an emphasis on COVID‐19: A narrative review. Health Science Reports, 6(1). https://doi.org/10.1002/hsr2.1024 

Tang, M., Holmgren, A. J., McElrath, E. E., Bhatt, A. S., Varshney, A. S., Lee, S. G., Vaduganathan, M., Adler, D. S., & Huckman, R. S. (2022). Investigating the association between telemedicine use and timely follow-up care after acute cardiovascular hospital encounters. JACC: Advances, 1(5), 100156. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jacadv.2022.100156 

Williams, C., & Shang, D. (2023). Telehealth for chronic disease management among vulnerable populations. Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities, 11(2), 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40615-023-01588-4 

NURS FPX 8012 Assessment 3 SAFER Guides and Evaluating Technology Usage

Zhang, X., & Saltman, R. (2021). Impact of electronic health records interoperability on telehealth service outcomes. JMIR Medical Informatics, 10(1), e31837. https://doi.org/10.2196/31837