7055SOH – Leading in Complex Health Systems Assignment Sample 2023
Introduction
Innovation in healthcare is necessary for providing effective healthcare service to patients. After the break out of pandemics around the world, the healthcare industry is following various innovative technologies in the service process. E-Prescription is a new innovation in the healthcare industry. The study aims to analyse the role of E-prescription for better healthcare service of Care UK.
The E-prescription is beneficial for maintaining the patient’s safety and reducing the cost of medications. The E-prescription brings transparency in the healthcare sector by recording the patient’s medication history, and the doctors can take decisions quickly by observing it. After the outbreak of Covid-19, the patients are highly following the internet for consulting with the doctors.
The study depicts the SWOT analysis of Care UK for analysing the strengths and weaknesses of the organisation. The PESTEL analysis reflects various factors which are essential for the development of Care UK.
Proposed innovation
Care UK has enhanced the robust infection control as well as safety measures in order to meet the residents as well as the team’s safety. Care UK is supporting people to leave and care for older people by providing comfortable care homes across England and Scotland. However, it has been difficult for the team to manage people visiting Care UK (Careuk.com, 2021).
The health care workers are the first line, workers with a higher risk of being infected. The care workers anticipate many asymptomatic COVID-19 patients coming for consultation for non-COVID related diseases. Thus, it can significantly jeopardise the staff and doctors safety. Therefore the innovation that is necessary for care in the UK is to implement the system of E-prescription.
The electronic prescription of the patient will be sent to the pharmacy section, where the patient can efficiently collect the copy of the e-prescription as well as the prescribed medicine from the pharmacy (AlQattan and Mirzal, 2018). The previous OPD details, including the clinical notes and the prescribed drugs, are also available for a second look. Therefore, it will minimise the delay in treatment and maintain the social distance at the time of the pandemic.
Justification for the choice
Maintaining safety and providing quality care to the patients are the most significant aspects of Care UK. Therefore, the healthcare industry is leveraging technology innovation that will help them to streamline the process, share information and enhance patient care.
Care UK has initiated to adapt the new era of “touchless healthcare”, which includes electronic prescribing, prescription price transparency, and reporting to public health authorities through technological innovation (Susilawati and Wiharso, 2021).
E-prescription will help the Care UK enhance patient care and develop clinical effectiveness, and it will ensure patients and staff safety at the time of the pandemic. It will further reduce operating costs.
SWOT analysis
The below SWOT analysis shows the strength and opportunities of e-prescription for Care UK.
| Strength | Weakness |
| ● Helps to facilitate better management of illness
● Enhance quality care, safety and effectiveness |
● Can add complexities to the treatments
● It can be provided to a limited number of medication |
| Opportunities | Threats |
| ● Helps to promote patient centre service provision
● Ensures cost-effectiveness by minimising ineffective management of medication |
● Implementing innovation may lead to an increase in cost
● It may disturb the sound relationship with the healthcare professional and patients ● Security threats |
Table 1: SWOT analysis of E-prescription
(Source: Self-created)
Analysis
From the above table, it can be stated that technological trends and innovation have helped the healthcare industry ensure safety in the workplace and provide better services at the time of the pandemic. E-prescription will help Care UK manage quality care and effectiveness at the time of global crisis where people cannot visit clinics. Implementing e-prescription will also help the organisation focus on patient-centred care and manage cost (Susilawati and Wiharso, 2021).
On the other hand, it is possible for less complex diseases as it may provide a limited number of medications. On the contrary, there are also specific threats to security standards such as viruses and hacking, which can be the barrier to the successful implementation of the innovation within Care UK. Hence, it is necessary to consider the weaknesses and threats while implementing e-prescription within Care UK.
Evidence for innovation
PESTLE
| Factors | Description |
| Political | The low level of government spending in the UK can be the barrier to implementing e-prescription in Care UK. On the other hand, Brexit may impact Care UK as it has widespread consequences in society. However, the healthcare workforce can be affected in case Brexit results in stricter or even minimal living conditions for the people in the UK. |
| Economic | The UK economy seems to lower its rate by 9.9% during Covid-19 (Statista, 2021). The economic fallout has significantly impacted the healthcare sectors, including Care UK. Care UK seems to face financial troubles, which are becoming difficult for the healthcare organisation to provide quality care and lack of qualified staff. |
| Social | Due to the ageing population, healthcare needs to improve, which has also ensured additional strain on healthcare organisations such as Care UK.
Around one-fifth of the people in the UK was ageing above 65 years in the year 2019, or 12.3 million people (Lewis et al. 2021). Therefore, the rising demand for quality healthcare facilities can be relevant for Care UK to implement e-prescription. |
| Technological | The technological aspects in UK healthcare are improving. For instance scanning tools are more affordable to provide quality services to the patients. Additionally, innovation is taking place in the UK, which can help Care UK to implement e-prescription to maintain social distancing at the time of global crisis. |
| Legal | It is also necessary for Care UK to adhere to the country’s rules and regulations. Thus, it is essential for the health care organisation to abide by the specific rules and regulations before implementing e-prescription in the UK (Garapati and Garapati, 2018). |
| Environmental | The outbreak of Covid-19 seems to affect the climatic condition in the UK. Therefore, maintaining social distancing is necessary, which creates huge pressure on the healthcare sectors to ensure technological innovation. Hence, it can be an extra burden for Care UK. |
Table 2: PESTEL analysis of E-prescription
(Source: Self-created)
Benefits of using e-prescription
There are several benefits of implementing e-prescription in healthcare organisations. It ensures patient safety, further minimises the cost of drugs and improves the pharmacy workflow.
- Enhance patients safety
There are chances of errors in written prescriptions, including selecting drugs that are not available, duplication of therapy, and others. Therefore the e-prescribing software is often equipped with “point of care decision support” (Oktarlina, 2020). This ensures to notify the potential errors before the doctor prescribes the drugs.
- Less time consuming
Prescription refill often takes ample time for the medical team; thus by implementing e-prescription, the prescription refill is done effectively. Thus, it frees the staff member to conduct other tasks.
- Access to patients records
E-prescription provides significant insight to patients’ previous health records in just one click (Garapati and Garapati, 2018). Thus it helps to overcome any issue for the patient while taking any prescribed medication.
Implementation plan
The E-prescription innovation is certainly going to bring multiple changes at the internal levels of the organisation Care UK. As a technological and environment friendly approach the e-prescriptions are certainly going to be more effective in catering to patients’ requirements, meeting patient safety, in the most cost effective and time effective manner.
However, the overall changes in the organisation needs to be effectively monitored and carefully handled in order to run the daily businesses successfully at Care UK.
It is imperative to identify with the potential changes that might influence the daily operations of the organisations’ staff while identifying with change management theories and models. The PDCA is an effective four step model that can benefit the organisation in carrying out the overall change as a part of the implementation process of the innovation.
The implementation of the innovation will require effective leadership, collaboration of all staff members, a strategic risk management plan, and a carefully designed change management system in the organization.
PDSA
The PDCA cycle is the plan-do- check- act model that is effective while starting any new improvement project in any organisation. It is also suitable in defining repetitive activities in an environment that is going through change and is looking forward to continuous improvement.
Figure 1: The plan-do- check- act model
Source- (Asq.org, 2021)
The plan- do- check- act procedure begins with the first step of planning that involves a careful identification of the innovation implementation process and planning for a change. In relation to the Care UK organisation, it is inconsequential to testing the overall change process as a part of the second stage of the model that will also involve carrying out small scale study and research at the internal level of the organisation.
The third stage of the model is to check or review the overall test or the change and identify with the positives and negatives. The last step of the model is to take needful actions based on the previous stages and will form the monitoring activities (Asq.org, 2021).
As an imperative part of the overall implementation process the PDCA model will help in strategically planning the overall implementation identifying with the needs of the employment designing the e- prescriptions as per the requirements of the stakeholders, setting specific goals for the staff members, designing new and better services, by understanding the approach and implications of IP ascriptions.
Change management
In addition, Care UK must identify with Kurt Lewin’s change management model. The change model from Lewin involves three steps; unfreezing, changing, and re- freezing. The first step is to unfreeze. In relation to Care UK and the introduction of the prescriptions as the proven innovation, preparing the organisation to adapt new changes is important. Staff members and care givers must identify with the importance of prescriptions first in order to be fully aware of the change that is needful to be accepted.
The second step of the change model is to bring the change that will help the staff members to resolve any uncertainty that has been observed in the previous step and be able to successfully perform better and new ways of daily activities. This is the stage where the e-prescriptions will be provided to the patients and caregivers will help in developing the E prescriptions on a daily basis.
The last step of the change model from Lewin’s model is to refreeze the organisation after the staff members have successfully embraced the new ways of workings at the organisation. It must be noted that business stakeholders of Care UK will play a significant role in internalizing and institutionalizing the changes as a part of the refreezing stage.
Figure 2: Kurt Lewin’s Change management model
Source- (Adila and Muthu, 2019)
In order to implement the innovation, it is imperative to develop strong leadership at the internal levels of the organisation in order to pursue the change management styles and strategies successfully. It must be noted that in relation to Care UK the transformational leadership style will help in managing the change as well as implementing the strategies successfully.
The transformational leadership will allow equal opportunities to all staff members in sharing their opinions, feedback, and express their ideas to the upper management and supervisors (Eliyana and Ma’arif, 2019). It is also going to drive change in the most effective manner by spotting gaps and weaknesses that can hinder the organisation to reach its objectives, as observed from the studies by Alqatawenh (2018.).
The transformational leadership also allows in solving problems, encourages learning and improves overall communications at all levels of the organisation. It must be noted that in order to implement any new idea or innovation effective communication needs to be practised by all business stakeholders.
The transformational leadership style will help in pursuing employee motivation and provide opportunities to pursue effective communication while adapting the change that will come alongside the introduction of E prescriptions (Robbins and Davidhizar, 2020).
In order to develop and maintain strong organisational culture creating a cultural balance and a strong understanding of the sense of belonging is important. It must be noted that the employees need to be empowered, motivated, in order to foster a sense of attachment to the organisation and be fully aware of the innovation and its immediate benefits in order to support the implementation process.
Support from local communities and business stakeholders are also imperative to create the cultural balance at the organisation in the most positive manner (Mannion and Davies, 2018). Developing a cultural change plan alongside understanding the change management models discussed above will also help the implementation process to run smoothly.
Lastly Care UK must adapt risk management strategies in order to identify with the potential obstacles and threats that might hinder growth for the organisation (Hopkin, 2018). It must be noted that managing a risk register on a daily basis as a part of the organisational leadership duty will help in developing suitable mitigating strategies for potential threats and risks and help the overall implementation of the innovation successful.
Measuring successful implementation of innovation
In addition, this will also measure how technology provides customer satisfaction regarding recording customer data and rendering quick accessibility to the information by the health professionals and other staff. By implementing the e-prescription within the health organisation, staff and every workforce will easily detect the number of patients treated and prescribed with the medicine. .
Balanced scorecard
Figure 3: Balance scorecard
(Source: Garapati and Garapati, 2018)
It is evident that measuring the success of a project, balance scorecards used to be chosen. Parameters of the balanced scorecard model enable performance measurement regarding specific projects (Garapati and Garapati, 2018). The BSC model measures the financial metrics of the organisation and is considered as a strategic management metrics utilised to identify manifold internal business functions.
Staff development, financial determination, customer management, and meeting organisational goals are the chief themes of this model. It mainly covers concerns such as learning for providing great products and services, internal processes, financial, growth and customer services.
For implementing E-prescription in Care UK, balanced scorecards will measure the safety care provided to the customers or patients in the UK. E-prescription will help the Care UK to enhance patient care along with developing clinical effectiveness, it will ensure patients and staff safety at the time of pandemic, it will further reduce operation cost.
With the help of the BSC model, healthcare organisations may properly measure the way hospitals provide proper diagnosis and medicines provided to the patients.
Balanced scorecards have been in great use within the healthcare sector to list out the results in delivering health care services for making continuous quality improvement. It has been gained that innovation is needed in the health sector to provide quality and safe care to the patients and this is found to be complex as the patient issues increase. It is gained that
the old age population requires quick services as compared to the young population as complex access to medical help can impact their lives. In times of pandemic innovation for overcoming the issues which the population face while receiving services from health professionals is observed (Muda et al. 2018).
E-prescription is recognised as a great tool for health professionals and patients in receiving benefits. It has the potential to ensure patients and staff safety at the time of pandemic and has the efficacy in reducing the cost. Because of the crisis, the healthcare sector is in need to embrace such tools that can enhance the safety of the patient.
Recommendation
The Care UK authority needs to follow some recommendations which are crucial for the incorporation of E-prescription in the healthcare service.
- The Care UK management needs to incorporate artificial intelligence in the healthcare system for better and effective service to the patients. Artificial intelligence benefits the patients by giving instant feedback to them. The technology is evolving frequently and the Care UK needs to embrace it for gaining a competitive advantage. It is beneficial for saving time and cost optimisation. The customers will give positive feedback in case they get instant support.
- The management needs to develop a virtual healthcare system for helping patients remotely. The doctors are prescribing patients through video conferencing technology as the patients are using the internet for consulting with doctors.
- The employees need to be trained for using modern technology. The employees are not well skilled in using the computerised technology and communicating with the patients. Hence, employee training is beneficial for the organisation to provide online service. Apart from the technology, the employees face challenges to communicating with the patients through online media. Hence, it will reduce such communication problems.
- Care UK need to update all the important information regularly. It is effective for increasing productivity and informing the patients regarding the activities of the organisation.
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it can be concluded that Care UK can improve the health service quality. The organisation can be able to maintain the safety rules and increase the effectiveness which facilitates the patients for getting better service. However, it can create chaos for the patients who are not competent with the new technology. It is beneficial for remote patients as well as the patients who need quality service at a minimum price.
The political factors help Care UK for getting a competitive advantage over other companies. However, the financial problem is a barrier for the Care UK due to the pandemic around the world. The technological advancement in the healthcare of the UK has a positive impact on the Care UK to reach maximum customers. Society is embracing the changes in healthcare technology and Care UK can apply the E-prescription to provide better quality care.
References
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Alqatawenh, A.S., 2018. Transformational leadership style and its relationship with change management. Verslas: teorija ir praktika, 19(1), pp.17-24.
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Hopkin, P., 2018. Fundamentals of risk management: understanding, evaluating and implementing effective risk management. Kogan Page Publishers.
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Mannion, R. and Davies, H., 2018. Understanding organisational culture for healthcare quality improvement. Bmj, 363.
Muda, I., Erlina, I.Y. and AA, N., 2018. Performance audit and balanced scorecard perspective. International Journal of Civil Engineering and Technology, 9(5), pp.1321-1333.
Oktarlina, R.Z., 2020. E-Prescribing: Benefit, Barrier, and Adopting Challenge in Electronic Prescribing. Journal of Medicine, 21(2), pp.98-101.
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Statista. 2021. Topic: The UK economy. [online] Available at: <https://www.statista.com/topics/6500/the-british-economy/#topicHeader__wrapper> [Accessed 18 November 2021].
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