Question

Information systems steering committees are used in most healthcare organizations to make strategic and budgetary decisions. Are the information systems steering committees valuable to the organization? Why is it important to have different disciplines represented on the committee? What are some examples of situations where they can help improve the IM/IT services in an organization?

1-2 page essay, please cite if needed for health informatics

Answer 1

Information systems steering committees are used in most healthcare organizations to make strategic and budgetary decisions. Are the information systems steering committees valuable to the organization?

The Information systems are definitely valuable to the organization. The meaning of a steering committee is, “An advisory committee that typically comprises of high level stakeholders and experts who are responsible for guiding on key issues such as company policy and objectives, allocation of resources, marketing, budgetary control and strategies & decisions involving large expenditures. Except 15% of the total organization strength, the rest of them have an IT steering committee. The IM/IT steering committees lean towards providing strategic approval for IM/IT decisions made, get involved into budgetary decisions and often play a role in vendor selection. When such a major chunk of organizations use a steering committee, it means that their existence is valuable in organizations. Their presence is significant in information technology development. Since information technology impacts so many areas, it is crucial to have shareholders from the areas of billing, quality, risk, etc. As the steering committee reports to the governing bodies and executives of the company, one has belief in their designated roles and responsibilities and they are appropriate for successful involvement in IT.

Why is it important to have different disciplines represented on the committee?

It is vital to have different disciplines represent on the committee because the IT department is slowly changing the face of the healthcare industry and the changes it makes are required to adhere to all aspects of the business.

• A logistics and medical equipment expert would cite the best possible way to arrange for the medical equipments, devices and hospital supplies.
• An insurance expert would cite the different facets pre-requisite in case of a medical insurance.
• Doctors and nurses for keeping appointments dates, engaging in the room allocation systems and identification of best practices that may help avoiding medical errors.
• The executive management to manage the whole arrangement, drawing up the hierarchy system and assign responsibility and accountability to employees.

What are some examples of situations where they can help improve the IM/IT services in an organization?

Some examples where they can help improve the IM/IT services in an organization are:-

• IT will be needed to engage in compliance when the healthcare industry grows to take up initiatives such as disease surveillance, health management of population and reporting of public health.
• Taking basic decisions and actions depending upon control processes and indispensable project data.
• Determining the standards and then the level of successful activity by quantitative analysis of daily routine work to analyse if there are any discrepancies.
• Controlling of actions that need to be decentralized to find out if any breach or negligence of duties has occurred.
• Connecting the required platforms – Social network, mobile and on cloud storage.
• Using Business Intelligence to correlate customer and enterprise data.
• Slowly, but steadily ending customization of processes by traditional project management approach and bringing IT into the picture.