Ela Gunes

CASE 2.2 Business Case: Data Chaos Creates Risk

1. What might happen when each line of business, division, and
department develops its own IT apps?
If each line of business, division, and department develops its
own IT apps, there might be data chaos. It leads to the hospital
having IT groups that specifically manage a particular type of
application suite or data silo. Data silos do not have the
capability to exchange data with other ISs, making timely
coordination
and
communication
across
functions
or
departments difficult.
2. What are the consequences of poorly managed apps?
When apps are not well managed, terabytes of irrelevant data
can be generated, causing hospitals to drown in such data. This
data chaos could cause medical errors.
3. What two risks are posed by data chaos? Explain why.
Two risks are Dirty data (Faculty Data) and Data Breaches.
-Dirty data is poor-quality data that they cannot be trusted for
decisions. If hospitals adopt electronic health records, medical
errors might be resulted from incorrect lab values and physician
documentation. That might affect patients the organizations
reputation negatively.
-A data breach is an incident in which sensitive, protected or
confidential data has potentially been viewed, stolen or used by an
individual unauthorized to do so. Most breaches involved lost or
stolen data on laptops, removable drives, or other portable media.
4. What are the functions of data governance in the healthcare
sector?
Data governance, or information governance, is the control of
enterprise data through formal policies and procedures. A goal of
data governance is to provide employees and business partners
with high quality data they trust and can access on demand. Data
governance will help VUCM on these issues in healthcare sector;
-IT investments are not governed by HIM (Healthcare Information
and

Management) policies.
-Medical records became electronic so they are more vulnerable to
hacking.
-As new uses of electronic information were emerging, the
medical center struggled to survive.

5. Why is it important to have executives involved in data

governance projects?
Because, executives develop the strategy for standardizing
health record practices, minimize risk, and maintain compliance.
The committee reports to the medical board and an executive
committee to ensure executive involvement and sponsorship. In
addition, members are from many different divisions, it may help to
increase interaction and information change between departments.
Before that, VUMCs leaders assigned data governance to their
traditional medical records committee, but that approach failed.
Therefore, they created to a health record executive committee to
inspect the project. This committee also defines procedures for
removal of duplicate medical record numbers and policies for data
management and compliance.