Trinity Health Case Study

Analyses: Case Studies

Major institutions have the advantage and resources to apply advanced technology in improving patient care. Kudyba (2016) showcased Trinity Health who illustrated three successful case studies, producing positive health care outcomes. Their testimony should serve an inspiration to other hospitals who seriously consider investing on advanced health informatics.

Case Study One

This case study was intended to involve physicians in leading the goal of providing a safe, quality, and efficient patient care. Through their created Physician Profiling System (PPS) with integrated customer relationship management (CRM), the physician’s quality and cost of care were disclosed and itemized with the average length of stay (ALOS),

procedural, and treatment costs. The results were significant financial savings, decreased ALOS, and physicians’ satisfaction. Perhaps the most influential factor for the PPS success is the physicians’ motivation. As a result, Kudyba (2016) mentioned that physicians began to appropriate their care to lower the patients’ ALOS and hospital costs. When the system design is clear enough to produce transparent and reliable outcomes, the intended users will adopt and embrace the system’s full potential.
Case Study Two
Integrated Information Shared Services (12S2) Intranet was designed by Trinity Health to create a wealth of information to its employees on the organizations’ quality performance.

In addition, 12S2 provides an easy access to its employees regarding tools and evidence-based guidelines on providing excellent care, real patients, employees, and physicians’ satisfaction scores, risk event reports, educational, and management strategies. Therefore, Trinity Health received an award from the National Committee for Quality Health Care and became one of the top 10 health systems in the Thomson Reuters 100 Top Hospitals. The success of Trinity Health is believable in its strategy to engage its 50,000 employees in achieving a safe and excellent patient care. In addition, 12S2 afforded a quick and effective collaboration among healthcare personnel. Through 12S2, Trinity Health communicated to its employees the value of their roles and contributions to the organizations’ quality

performance.

Case Study Three
The final case study is on the clinical Adverse Drug Event (ADE) alert system. Trinity Health carefully planned the design of the system, involving organizational and department leaders to create data standards that are timely, user-friendly, reliable, and compatible with other existing applications. Through concerted efforts of the clinicians, executive leaders, and HIT experts, Trinity Health saved financial costs on pharmacy, ALOS, and death rates. With its efficient ADE design, a clinician’s task becomes easier and safer to receive and administer medications. ADE also provides ease of communication between clinicians and pharmacists with similar patient data available to them. Thus, Trinity Health’s positive results are believable with their ADE system.
Research on Case Studies
Although Trinity Health has demonstrated their success in improving the quality and costs of patient care through implementing their PPS, 12S2, and ADE system, other successful stories are still limited to warrant their application. Perhaps it is because of the fact that advancing HIT is still an evolving mission to many organizations to produce convincing results. Yet, one can only explore on the possible long term effects of these measures to health care workers.
Physician Profiling System
The major strength of this measure is holding physicians’ accountable for the patient services they provide. While, the Trinity Health’s physicians reacted positively on the outcomes, the physicians from the episode-based profiling have different reactions. For example, Sandy, Rattray, and Thomas (2008) explored on the episode-based profiling where a physician’s performance is measured on each care period. This kind of profiling was used by health plans based on gathered data from claims, credentialing agencies, and other administrative functions. Using highly sophisticated analytics, physicians are graded and financially rewarded based on the quality and low cost of care. Despite its efficiency in data mining, many physicians feel the data were inaccurate and incomplete to reflect their quality performance.
Integrated Information Shared Services
Integrated Information Shared Services (12S2) utilized to improve quality performance can also have negative outcomes to other health care workers.

Unlike the staff from Trinity Health, the other staff studied cited some drawbacks from these expectations. For instance, Powell et al. (2012) conducted a study on health care providers’ feedbacks on their performance measure(PM) system. While positive outcomes resulted from PM were documented, the staff reported facing the pressure to conform to the requirements of PM. Because PM contains criteria needed to be met and addressed, Powell et al. (2012) concluded that the providers tend to get distracted from giving personalized and individualized care to patients.

Adverse Drug Event

With its good intention to reduce medication errors, Ojeleye, Avery, Gupta, and Boyd (2013) did a comparative design studies on ADE alert system effectiveness. Their conclusion showed similar results of substantial reduction of errors in order entry and preventing clinical hazards or adverse reactions to Trinity Health. However, Ojeleye et al. (2013) received users’ feedback on ADE alert system’s wastefulness on creating false alerts and conflicts in alert managements.

Conclusion
Health informatics is establishing its capability to assist clinicians in providing safe and low cost quality care. Many challenges are still yet to be faced in terms of finances, suitable design to fit the organizations’ mission, employees, and the community they serve. Although success stories from Trinity Health hold promising results, each organization must also recognize its own uniqueness in customizing their health informatics design. Nonetheless, organizational leaders must seek to inspire their employees to join forces in achieving this complex task of innovating health informatics.