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HEALTH CARE INFORMATICS
HEALTH CARE INFORMATICS
Name
Course
Tutor
Date
Health Care Informatics
Healthcare informatics is a dynamic sector, and it undergoes changes in a high rate. The health level seven standards are evolving with an aim of solving problems present in the healthcare facilities. The healthcare informatics allows development of speedy processes so that the problems in healthcare do not increase or spread to other levels. The health level seven integrates the healthcare enterprise cooperation to enhance appropriate addressing of existing problems. Health level seven is the highest level of international standards for open systems interconnection. The methods of integrating, sharing and retrieving information is changing with advancement in technology. Information movement is currently fast, reliable and gets to the appropriate people. The language structure of the data and documents are in the code-form such that only relevant authority can understand the content of the information. The data security level is high hence minimizing data manipulation (Dolin & Alschuler, 2011).
The current issues surrounding the health level seven standards are on data exchange and timing of transmitting data. The data security checks are upgrading, and the participants in data transfer need to avail the identification. The negotiations procedures and mechanisms are improving leading in improvement of the data exchange structuring. Improvement in healthcare level seven leads in improvement of care delivery and optimization of the workflow. The activities taking place in the healthcare system are becoming clear to all the executive members. Knowledge transfer among the executive members and stakeholders is the target of the current changes. The health level seven standards want to develop Standards Developing Organization (SDO), and Profiler and Enforcer Organization (PEO) for review processes in the healthcare system. The organizations aim in creating a framework for transferring necessary information from system to the system in multiple healthcare enterprises (Sahay, 2011).
The ASTM Health Record Content Standards was the first electronic health record system. The American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) is a body that checks the laboratory standards, exchanges messages, and maintains electronic health records. The standards are changing through securing the information and the whole database system. The parts that have not changed are on the pathologists’ nomenclature. The nomenclature for pathologists was developed in 1965, and it is still used in the current 21st century in the pathology department. The changes in the ASTM Health record content standards are slow and systematic. The standards deal with logical data organization that requires minimal changes in order to ensure reliability and continuity of services. The major information structures and content are present in the ASTM. The patient variables are the major information dockets to consider in offering services to the clients (Ferranti et al. 2006).
The information of the patients in ASTM Health Records is essential in diagnosis, education and treatment of the patient. The current issues in the ASTM Health Record Content Standards are on implementation of physical issues relating to the model of the reporting the health records. The information should be in the global database and should guide the appropriate authority in getting details of the patient charges, billing system, and patient care. The documentation process and administrative issues are among the issues surrounding the standards. The electronic health records should cover all the healthcare services and should acknowledge patient records. Consistency of the data is of the essence in order to have integrity of the data. The relationship of the existing data from different sources should be clear and easy to make a follow-up (Blobel, 2004).
References:
Blobel, B. (2004). Authorisation and Access Control For Electronic Health Record Systems.
International journal of medical informatics, 73(3), 251-257.
Dolin, R. H., & Alschuler, L. (2011). Approaching Semantic Interoperability in Health Level
Seven. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 18(1), 99-103.
Ferranti, J. M., Musser, R. C., Kawamoto, K., & Hammond, W. (2006). The Clinical Document
Architecture and the Continuity of Care Record: A Critical Analysis. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 13(3), 245-252.
Sahay, R., Fox, R., Zimmermann, A., Polleres, A., & Hauswrith, M. (2011). A Methodological
Approach For Ontologising and Aligning Health Level Seven (HL7) Applications. In Availability, Reliability and Security for Business, Enterprise and Health Information Systems (pp. 102-117). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
Unnatural Causes Documentary
Unnatural Causes Documentary
Name
Institution
Unnatural Causes Documentary
The documentary, “Unnatural Cause” that was produced in 2008 and broadcast nationally on PBS, presents a shocking and a heartbreaking statistic accompanied by personal stories from different individuals. The four-hour documentary explores racial and social-economic issues in healthcare in United States. Instead of delivering health to people regardless of their race and income gaps, the documentary shows that poverty, discrimination, unemployment, exploitation and lack of support, are the reason why mortality is high among the American people. Sadder, the documentary shows that inequality is the reason that is making people sick and why the American healthcare is spending more money and getting less out of it. Several factors the affect the American healthcare emerge and they include racism, discrimination and exploitation (Documentary Series, 2015).
In episode two, “When the Bough Breaks”, the video introduces us to Kim Anderson, a successful lawyer and a mother from Atlanta. Through her painful experience when she was in labor in 1990, we learn that there was an element of racism. Despite her high socioeconomic status, good state of health and abstinence from unhealthy activities such as smoking and drinking, she delivered an underweight baby. The documentary reveals to us that Mrs. Kim went into labor pain earlier than expected. According to SES, Genes and expert, James Collins and Richard David, they demonstrated that both the African immigrants and the US- born whites’ babies had similar outcomes at birth, yet, the weights of African-Americans babies weighed significantly less. The cause of the problem was racism which was labeled against the African-American in their daily lives and when they were accessing health care. As a result, they experienced stress (women in particular) making them to have health problems. Racism against African-American as observed from the documentary, does not depend on their social economic statuses, but on their skin color; which transcend access of healthcare by the African-Americans. Moreover, although civil rights were implemented in United States in 1960s, the documentary reveals that today, racism continues to act as barrier against the African-Americans accessing healthcare, thereby denying the social justice (Documentary Series, 2015).
Another problem affecting the American healthcare is discrimination. The episode, “Becoming American”, reveals that although immigrants, for example, from Mexico, try to shield themselves through tight family ties and traditions, the negative American culture still prevent them from accessing proper healthcare. According to Dr. William of Vega’s research on Mexican immigrants, he reports that most Mexicans who have worked in America for more than 13 years have stress problems. The cause of the stress problem is discrimination perpetrated through low wages, poor working conditions and the social exclusions. Social exclusion has denied immigrants the right to access healthcare. However, Amadar admitted that farm owner have formed union that has ensured the immigrants’ social justice and their socio economic well-being is protected by running free clinics for workers and providing after-school teaching for the children to have a better future (Documentary Series, 2015).
Thirdly, in the episode, “Bad Sugar”, Indians from Pima and Tohono have been unable to access medical care due to exploitation by the Native Americans by diverting a river upstream. The river was the source of livelihood for the Pima people and as a result of the diversion; it destroyed the Indian agricultural and made them poor. According to Dr. Don Warne, a trained physician who works at Pima, he reported that people had health problems long time and could not afford going to the clinic because of poverty. As a result poverty, the people from Pima could not practice the customary ways of controlling diseases such as diabetes and, had a higher likelihood of getting diabetes than high income earning Indians. As a way of restoring social justice in Pima and Tohono, Attorney Rod Lewis negotiated the return of water, building of road and other infrastructure (Documentary Series, 2015).
At the end of the documentary, it raises my eyebrows to realize the tragic events that were happening in America and the subsequent denial of social justice in healthcare. It is clear that America is still intoxicated with racism, exploitation, discrimination and inequality which; has denied the African-Americans and immigrants freedom and their rights in United States.
References
Documentary Series. (2015). Unnatural Causes: is inequality Making Us Sick? Documentary
Series. Accessed February 6, 2015.
Retrieved from: http://www.unnaturalcauses.org/episode_descriptions.php?page=2
Organization Culture
Unmasking the myths
Unmasking the Myths
Organization Culture
Organization culture fosters an organization to achieve its business goals and objectives. The organizational culture can foster ethics as well unethical issues. Like Enron’s leadership and organizational culture was unethical whereas 3M and apple fosters innovative organizational culture so as to improve its efficiency. Organizational culture of an organization helps in fostering the behavior of the employees and the future of the organization. Organizational culture helps in team building within the organization. As through the organizational culture helps in fostering creativity, innovation, sharing of values. Organizational culture has become highly focused to innovation, through technological development and advancement the organizational culture helps in fostering change in the organization which helps in adopting total quality management.
Organizational culture is one of the most important aspect of the organization which helps in fostering development and change in the organization. It is the base of the organization which highly affects the behavior of the employees in the organization. The organizational culture can build positive behavior in an employee as well as negative behavior. It can be said that the growth of the organization highly depends on the organizational culture.
Creating a friendly and fun environment helps the employee to innovate. Companies like Apple and Google focuses on building a strong organizational culture which helps in increasing the efficiency of the employees. With the fun environment and culture the organizations are able to increase the efficiency of the employees.
UN Global Compact Principles
Ten Universal Principle:
Human rights
Principle 1: Businesses should support and respect the protection of internationally proclaimed human rights; and
Principle 2: make sure that they are not complicit in human rights abuses.
Labor standards
Principle 3: Businesses should uphold the freedom of association and the effective recognition of the right to collective bargaining;
Principle 4: the elimination of all forms of forced and compulsory labour;
Principle 5: the effective abolition of child labour; and
Principle 6: the elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation.
Environment
Principle 7: Businesses should support a precautionary approach to environmental challenges;
Principle 8: undertake initiatives to promote greater environmental responsibility; and
Principle 9: encourage the development and diffusion of environmentally friendly technologies.
Anti-curruption
Principle 10: Businesses should work against all forms of corruption, including extortion and bribery. (Foundation for UN Global Compact)
Myths
There are different myths in respect to the organization culture which are faced by the organization, these myths include the eclipse of Etiquette over ethics, Tolerance can, and business exists to maximize profits.
Eclipse of Etiquette over ethics
Considering different aspects and organizational tools we can say that ethics plays a major role in the organizational culture. Today, the businesses need to be ethical in their working. Ethics is the study of right and wrong, the duty and different obligations that the firm needs to follow, different moral norms and the responsibility that an individual carries. Business Ethics is the ethics that needs to be followed in the context of the business. It is the application of principles, discipline and theories of ethics to the organizational context. (Helms, 2006). The business needs to work ethically and morally in their business. The company has to meet the standards of conduct focusing on welfare of humans and their right to make their own choices. A company which is working unethically is not able to survive and meet the competition, the consumers today prefers the company who is ethical and work as per the ethics, thus eclipse of etiquette over ethics does not hold true in today’s competition.
Tolerance can
With the increasing competition in the market, it is important for the company to have a strong organizational culture which fosters growth and creativity in the organization and which can eradicate the competition and meet up with the tolerance. To resist the tolerance it is important for the company to change its strategies and system. Organizational change and a systematic approach to it-organization are to change at every step in the dynamic changing world. The factors can be internal or external like the carbon credit an external factor while growth target changed an internal factor. The change can affect the organization as well as the employee at large so; a good decision needs to be taken taking care of all the aspects of the organization. Organization change should foster the change that is targeted on the improving the performance of the working staff as well as the organization as a whole. The foundation of an systematic approach is that when a resource whether that is a person, function, or a product or service that is a part of the organization as an whole. A change in one thing will bolster the need to change something/s related to the former thing. System thinking helps the managers to seek the need of doing a research analysis to monitor the effect that a change will have on the board perspective on the company. Taking a broad view of the things that needs to be changing this will help them to identify the concern areas and issues this whole will help to quickly resolve the issue at hand. Systematic approach does not guarantee that the change will be without the ill effects this guarantee that this will help the organization to integrate the aims of the changes within the organization.
The internal factors are the changes which are based on the necessary changes that the organization faces, these changes are based on the change in the managerial, personnel deficiency which is there in the organization practices. These factors includes changes in the top management, change in the size of the organization, the gap in the performance of the organization and its performance, the gap in the employees needs and wants, deficiency in the existing organization in terms of the culture and values whereas the external forces are based on the different external factors. These include the factors which are not in the control of the organization and include the changes in the social, political, ethical, economic and technological changes. It includes all the factors pertaining to the external environment according to which the company needs to change its policies and management which will help the organization to attain competitive edge in the market of the operations.
Business exists to maximize profits
The Corporate were initially perceived just as a profit making unit and were only confined to generate profits, generate employment and pay taxes. The corporate were considered as a social responsible organization if it was able to generate huge amount of profits and employment for the workforce. (Friedman, M. 1970)
Though the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility, was introduced long back, but it was adopted by the corporate long after its introduction. The need and demand of Corporate Social Responsibility was triggered by the increasing changes in the global market i.e. Globalization and social awareness. The need of Corporate Social Responsibility was also recognized with the rising regulatory standards and consumer demands. In today’s world companies are expected to work ethically and act with several responsibility and accountability towards the community, society, marketplace, and environment.( Friedman, M. 1970) The corporate in today’s time are accountable to the society as society expects them to be responsible for the several acts done by these corporate.
Corporate Social Responsibility has helped several companies to develop and work upon several new core competencies, which enables the corporate to build a special relation with its customers, society, its shareholders and government by the sustainability acts done by them. The corporate social responsibility activities help in building a positive image of the company, it also helps in building goodwill which in long run helps in generating profits. The CSR activities of the firm encourages its employees to participate in several social responsibilities it helps in building up loyalty. It also helps in building up a dedicated workforce and the employees become committed towards to organization. (Carroll, A.B. 1979)
With the increasing need and demand of the society, customers. The corporate works on a momentum “triple bottom line” or “sustainable” approach. These are social, environmental, and financial data which is used for evaluating the performance of the company. The companies are expected to perform well not only in terms of finance but also in the terms of areas which are not included in the part of the financial aspect i.e. ethics, human rights, environmental policies, corporate governance, environmental concerns, development of communities, issues in respect to its workplace, corporate governance, and business ethics. The performance of the companies is evaluated in respect of financials, social and environmental. (Carroll, A.B. 1979)
Transparency
With the increasing information driven economy, the businesses have become transparent. The Companies needs to be transparent in disclosing all its activities, policies and practices as these activities in a way affect the society, investors, environment, employees, economy of the country. So, disclosing these activities has become essential for these organizations.
Knowledge
With the increasing information-driven economy, the investors, consumers, stakeholders urge for more information about the corporate. The consumers do consider the sustainability and environmental record of the company, investors and stakeholders choose the stocks of the company according to their social moves.
Sustainability
With the increasing problem of globalization and diminishing resources, it is very important for an organization to make a move in helping the environment and run their business as per the interest of the environment without hampering the natural resources.
Globalization
As the world is going global, the company has opened its door for broader public interests. Global organization such as UN, WWF, environmentalists are concerned about the working of an organization towards the environment, community and society. (Melanie Merrifield, 2009)
Conclusion:
Organizational culture is one of the most important aspect of the organization which helps in fostering development and change in the organization. It is the base of the organization which highly affects the behavior of the employees in the organization. The organizational culture can build positive behavior in an employee as well as negative behavior. It can be said that the growth of the organization highly depends on the organizational culture.
Creating a friendly and fun environment helps the employee to innovate. Companies like Apple and Google focuses on building a strong organizational culture which helps in increasing the efficiency of the employees. With the fun environment and culture the organizations are able to increase the efficiency of the employees.
References:
Tamara J Erikson and Lynda Graton, Harvard Business Review, What It means to work hereCarroll, A.B. 1979. A three-dimensional model of corporate social performance, Academy of Management Review, 4, 497–505.Carroll, A.B. 1991. The pyramid of corporate social responsibility: toward the moral management of organizational stakeholders, Business Horizons, Jul–Aug, 39–48.
Carroll, A.B. and A.K. Buchholtz. 2002. Business and Society: Ethics and Stakeholder Management, 5th ed. Cincinnati: South-Western College Publishing/Thomson Learning.
Freeman, R.E. 1984. Strategic Management. A Stakeholder Approach. Boston: Pitman.
Friedman, M. 1970. The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits, The New York Times Magazine, 13 September, 1970.