Peachtree Recommendations

Introduction

Developing and maintaining an IT infrastructure can be a demanding task in the hospital industry. This is because healthcare is an ever changing industry. The task becomes even more difficult if the IT infrastructures of two hospitals are to be merged since different hospitals have different policies, different services, and practices. Such a task requires a thorough research into each hospital’s policies, services, and current IT infrastructure.

Opinions before Commentaries and After

Before I read the commentaries, my opinions had been focused on the problem of merging the IT infrastructure in the different hospitals. I did not consider that there were other IT experts in the other hospitals. I also did not give enough time to the thought of how the new infrastructure would affect the staff from the different hospitals. Also, I failed to consider how the patients in the different hospitals would be affected if a hardware shut down were necessary. My main concern was how to get the job done with minimum cost.

Commentator Comments that Made Sense and Why

Monte Ford through his comments demonstrated that he had conducted his research. In his comments, he provides facts and figures from his SOA industry research. He also gives examples of other companies in the U.S and countries from Asia and North America. Monte Ford took the comments made by Candace and expounded on them giving facts from his own research. He even added more information to the recommendation given by Candace with facts.

According to Business Wire 2011, hospitals have recently been implementing and upgrading to new IT systems to improve the quality of healthcare offered to the patients, patient information exchange, coordinate the process of providing health care, and improve patient engagement.

Parts of the Commentators Recommendation to be used

I will use some of the recommendations made by Monte Ford. The points where he explains the comments on SOA that were made by Candice can be very helpful. Candice commented that to connect computer applications across a network would require the applications to be web based. However, Monte Ford argues that the applications do not have to be web based. He insists that there are positive reviews from users who experienced such a system in other companies. Monte Ford’s recommendations on removing the doubt on how well SOAs can succeed are also helpful in indicating that the system will be successful. He also indicates that many hospitals have been using the SOA system and there were positive reviews from users. Monte Ford has made some good recommendations that I would consider using. These include recommendations such as how the SOA has helped hospitals in ensuring standardization of operations across a wide range of hospitals. This standardization is necessary because it helps to ensure proper synchronization of the patient and hospital information while still giving a chance to doctors to make important discussion cost effective.

Parts of the Recommendations that are Unique

The parts of recommendations that I consider unique include the idea of setting up an IT experts meeting with all the IT professionals from the other hospitals. This meeting would help to discuss the applications that are working and those that may not be working. The IT professionals from the different hospitals will find out how they can make use of the applications that are working. They can then use the working applications to integrate the hospitals’ processes. Bringing the IT professionals together to work as a team will help in easing the stress of having to develop the system alone; this would save a lot of time and resources. When the IT professionals work together as a team, it is easier to find a solution of integrating the entire system. This is because each IT expert has knowledge of his/her prospective hospital.

Explanation of the Recommendation I would make and why

My recommendations would be that all hospitals first make an IT professionals meeting in their respective hospitals. This will help to find out which applications are working and which are not. The IT experts should then try to fix the issues that are not working in their respective hospital. After the meeting in the different hospitals, I would suggest a meeting for IT experts from all the hospital. During this meeting, all IT experts will have the details of the IT infrastructure in their hospitals. This will enable the IT experts to share information about their facilities. Evaluating the operation of IT infrastructure in the different hospitals will give the IT professional an idea of which infrastructure is the best and which one can be used for all hospitals. This way, it will be possible to centralize all IT functions where management will be easy. Centralization will help in ensuring the security of the system since all hospital data will be stored at the same location. This makes it easy to control and maintain the IT infrastructure. This is important since it ensures confidentiality of patient information (Darves, 2004).

To make the stakeholders understand how my recommendations would work, I would give them an example of the results from a study that was conducted on the IT infrastructure for Nuffield Hospitals in the UK. This study shows an increase in effectiveness, efficiency, and overall hospital productivity as a result of such integration. Since the previous system was not integrated, I would recommend that the new infrastructure be implemented at the same time rather than gradual integration. However, the individual infrastructure in the different hospitals should not be displaced. This would help ensure that if there are some issues with the new system, then the hospital will still be able to use the old system to carry out dairy hospital activities. The standardization of the IT infrastructure in the different hospitals should then be done in steps. This will allow the staff from the different hospital to learn how to use the system and give the IT experts an opportunity to deploy the new processes in the infrastructure (Darves, 2004).

Conclusion

Merging IT infrastructure of the different organization is usually a demanding task. For hospitals, it becomes even more challenging since the functions of a hospital are not common. Failure of a hospital’s IT infrastructure can lead to fatal consequences. There are normally many variables in the hospital industry that make it difficult for hospitals to merge. However, when hospitals merge, there is a great benefit to the stakeholders and managers. This is the case for Peachtree Healthcare. Max Berndt comments that a good solution should be found for the problem at hand. With Monte Ford’s recommendation and suggestions from Max Berndt, the problem of merging Peachtree Healthcare can be addressed and changes implemented. This will help improve the IT infrastructure in Peachtree Healthcare.