Background

The Southern Cross Health Foundation (SCHF) is a private not for profit organization that was made to serve tertiary medical care. It was a project of two cardiologists from Melbourne who distinguished the requirement for a provincial medical services establishment to convey particular consideration to medicinally complex cases and fundamentally sick patients. Their operations were then joined by Vicente Borr who was a public health physician and was also the CEO. Uniting local city and political pioneers and benefactors, the foundation gathered the fundamental assets to dispatch the undertaking. At first centered on cardiology cases, they continuously extended their administration offer. Today, the SCHF offers clinical consideration in excess of sixty clinical claims to fame and serves as a showing clinic, where clinical understudies get preparing. The emergency clinic extended its administration offering by developing new offices to house extra beds, a trauma center (ER), and walking care administrations.

The hospital has various levels, top-down clinic made out of clinical units, each headed by an authority doctor. CEO, the chief medical director, the chief nursing officer, the chief administrative officer, and the heads of the medical units form the physicians’ medical council are answerable for conveying all senior administration choices to their units. There are various diagnostic tests and specialized medical treatments given to the patient such as chemotherapy, radiation therapy and cardiac rehabilitation. With that, there are administrative procedures as well which are governed by regulations. There are insurance contract guidelines and billings where insurers have agreements for the healthcare of their members. Then there is supply chain management where there have to be efficient management of supply and drug inventories. Archives that are so much in number have to keep accordingly since it is important to keep a track of medical records.

The key strength of SCHF lies in the fact that they have a vast majority of services in the health care sector and the hospital is willing to automate all the processes for easy access and management. In 2008, they had at least thirty information systems working independently in different departments. The Synergy project was a strategic project that enabled growing demand for services faced by SCHF which enhanced service delivery and efficiency. The implemented learning-based strategy to ensure that their users were able to adopt the system.

When shifting to a complete IT based solution for the administrative purposes, SCHF had to face many challenges. The medical records and doctor notes had to be carefully kept and were sometimes not found. With that, for insurance contracts, they need to be memorized and had to be kept in hard copy terms. The growing number of archives created a problem for the space and so it was hard to keep track of the medical records. The medical fee has to be managed and the issue became critical because if the system goes down for one to two day, a lot of other operations were highly affected. When introduced with this system, a lot staff personal didn’t know how to operate a computer or a system, hence it was a challenge in itself and training had to be done for this staff. And administrative staff who were already using the old systems were a bit reluctant in using the new system. With that, SCHF was open 24/7 so it was difficult to minimize workflow disruptions as well.

The key stakeholders for SCHF were all the doctors, staffs, administrators, nurses, insurers and the vendors who were there behind the implementation of the ERP system.

 

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Business Problem

Critical thinking in business is characterized as executing measures that decrease or eliminate obstructions that are keeping you or others from achieving operational and key business objectives.

In business, an issue is a circumstance that makes a hole between the ideal and genuine results. Also, a genuine issue regularly doesn’t have a promptly evident goal (What Is Problem Solving in Business?, 2020).

An issue doesn’t happen until somebody is accomplishing something and experiences at least one impediments (issues) that keep them from getting the result they need. A total business necessity portrays what somebody is doing, the result they eventually need, why it’s essential to their prosperity, the obstructions holding them up, and the results of not getting the ideal result (2020).

Problem	Priority	Will ERP solve it?
The procedure of transcription i.e. notes about a patient to the physician was complicated as the quality and availability of information was questionable	High	Yes. The doctor can directly enter the information in the database instead of writing it on a piece of paper and the nurse then trying to decipher the writing
Documents lost, mislaid or filed with wrong MR	High	Yes. The records upon the time of entry can be marked by patient’s name in the database and also the records are safe with no point of loss
A patient’s medical chart required by different doctors at the same time	Medium	Yes. Many doctors can access the record database at the same time
Doctor’s illegible handwriting	Medium	Yes. The nurse can directly read of the information from the software
Patient’s chart not available on hand at the time of entry	Medium	Yes. At the time of entry, all the information can be found in the software
Medical orders to be carried in a long chain making it time consuming and unreliable	High	Yes. All cycles can be shortened and immediate action can be taken
Possibility of duplicate orders for diagnostic tests	Medium	Yes. The duplicate orders can be deleted as checks can be assigned on database records by unique ids of patients or entries
Tracking insurers billing agreements	Medium	Yes. All data can be tracked by the hospital staff
Billing clerks thus had to memorize the contract terms or look them up in hard- copy manuals	Medium	Yes. All information can be found in the software instead of memorizing it
Order of additional supplies had to be written	Low	Yes. All order data can be fed in the software
Documents had to be manually collected, organized, and attached to invoices	Low	Yes. Every information can be linked together
Efficient management of supply and drug inventories is critical	Low	Yes. All records are present on the software
Growing demand for physical storage space for archives	Medium	Yes. ERP software offers large storage
Missing charts from archives	High	Yes. The archives information will saved in the database
Medical fee management system down	High	Yes. The system is always working and there will be no lag in the hospital operations

Business Requirements

A business necessity isn’t something a framework must do. It is something that the business needs to do or have so as to remain in business.

Understanding the genuine issue or business need will guarantee that you are conveying the most noteworthy incentive to your client. When we comprehend the genuine business needs, we can begin deciding the most ideal approach to move toward building an answer (if computerization is included) and how to execute that arrangement (says: et al., 2020).

Requirement	ERP functionality
Medical records to be kept safely in a database instead of handwritten notes	Work Order Management- will help in saving detail records in the database
Insurance contract billings to be entered	Financial consolidations- auto update and save all accounts information
Fees charged to patients to be recorded	Accounting system
Management of supply and drug inventories	Inventory management- to know the correct order and number of supplies in hand
Proper keeping of archive records not in physical form	Database Management- To have all the information in hand
Additional supplies to be managed accurately	Warehouse Management- All the additional supplies can be managed
Keeping a track of all the workers and staff performing their duties on time	Time recording/ Job time- Keeping a check on all employees and their work hours
Information available to all the doctors at the same time of different patients	Database Management- information accessible to more than one person at a time
Medical fee information present at hand	Account Management- all the information is available and so the operations do not lag behind
Archives saved in memory	Database Management- no worries of physical space occupation as all the data is saved

 

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Vendor Selection Criteria

Effective associations comprehend the significance of putting resources into the business. Notwithstanding, making that move to go through cash isn’t generally a simple choice. Thus, you have held off on making that fundamental business speculation sufficiently long. It’s currently an ideal opportunity to update your telephone framework, upgrade your site, or supplant the floor covering in your office (Lotich, 2020).

Choosing ERP software is shockingly difficult. Its time intensive and includes cooperation inside and remotely. ERP is business the board programming that empowers associations to utilize one framework for various business purposes. ERP programming has become the main arrangement of decision for developing organizations that need to keep up and improve their serious edge (Top 10 ERP Selection Criteria for Your ERP Implementation –, 2020).

The following are the selection criteria’s that need to be seen before choosing any ERP system for SCHF:

1. Functional fit: The usefulness of ERP programming items and administrations fit with your business is the most significant (and tedious) viewpoint in the ERP determination measure. As for SCHF, they are looking for a system that is able to integrate all the functionalities of different business process and form a single solution that is accessible to everyone. It has to be seen that the ERP is not that much simple and should be able to handle all complex activities too.
2. Industry experience: It has to be seen that what software is being used by different businesses present in your industry. This helps in streamlining choices as well. Industry is a factor to consider with your product seller as well as with your usage accomplice. Regardless of whether the seller and the execution accomplice has had accomplishment in your industry is fundamental.
3. Risk: Technology and ERP ventures at the undertaking level characteristically accompany some danger. Choosing an ERP programming with usefulness that accommodates your business, alongside huge numbers of different rules on this rundown, goes far in alleviating hazard during an ERP usage. With SCHF handling such huge amounts of data and saving so much risky information so its important that the ERP solution is safe and secure.
4. Scalable: Dealing with the underlying extent of an ERP programming usage is important to maintain a strategic distance from chance and guarantee achievement. You will probably have a dream of future improvements after the underlying execution. While assessing different ERP merchants, how the innovation fits with our business technique both today and not far off. With changing requirements for SCHF, it is important that the system is able to be scaled according to their needs as well.
5. ERP vendor viability: The reasonability of an ERP programming merchant is essential to consider similarly as ERP choice rules. How long has the item been available, what is the future programming guide, what is the innovative work interest in the item and what number of dynamic clients utilize the product? Since SCHF is a strong organization and deals with patients on a daily basis so all their information is extremely crucial. Hence it is important that the vendor has been in the market.

Implementation strategy

Procedure Implementation alludes to the execution of the plans and systems, to achieve the drawn out objectives of the association. It changes over the selected technique into the moves and activities of the association to accomplish the goals.

Technique Implementation is the fourth phase of the Strategic Management measure, the other three being an assurance of key mission, vision and goals, ecological and authoritative investigation, and planning the methodology. It is trailed by Strategic Evaluation and Control (What Is Strategy Implementation? Definition and Process, 2018).

Contingency planning is a cycle, fully expecting likely emergencies, of creating systems, courses of action and techniques to address the philanthropic needs of those unfavorably influenced by emergencies and it ought to be basic and simple to complete. It should be explicit as opposed to conventional. It is essential to connect the arrangement to hazard investigation and checking, so the arrangement is outlined based on explicit data.

Pre-live plans:

1. SCHF can for the time being use an extra database system which is able to handle all the patients’ data. Separate databases can be employed for inventory management, accounting, billing and many other business processes to save the data from loss and delay in business operations.
2. Other option could be to partner with another hospital to manage some of SCHF’s patients. Once the ERP rollout is in action, then SCHF can ask for the data and feed it into the new ERP system. In this way, the hospital would not have to compromise on their patients and the staff and doctors can treat their patients too.

Post-live plans:

1. All the departments should be held responsible for their part of the data and should immediately migrate all of it once the ERP goes live.
2. One key to progress lies in planning SAP information assurance and recuperation appropriately to guarantee that vacation is kept to unquestionably the base because of the criticality of these applications. Utilizing oversaw capacity exhibit depictions will increment and can give an answer for this since it can convey both quick catch of information to limit effect on creation frameworks while it happens fast, local organization recuperation to get back online quick when something turns out badly post usage.

 

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