Comparative information management between public healthcare programs and industrial practices

Abstract

This research aims to study, search, and improve, with the objective to compare between hospital management in managing information on public healthcare programs with industrial practices. Due to the fact that Thailand has never had an accurate and complete database of population entitled to specific healthcare benefits, which is an important factor for effective information management to minimize repetitive information for front reception department in a hospital. Basic privileges of the benefits, for the most part, are not clearly identified. However there may be requirements for subsidizing across programs privileges when one needs, a service, but ongoing changes of status of population, such as, job, address, girth, death and accident, and most importantly different privileges of benefits that may be repetitive in a single patient are limited The researcher presents a guideline to solve the problem by applying industrial practices to support the operation, which is really needed especially information coordination of the front reception department to improve services, reduce medical expenses for healthcare groups, such as, Universal Care (UC), Social Security Fund (SSF), Insurance (IN), Workmen’s Compensation Fund (WCF), and Civil Servant Medical Benefit Scheme (CSMBS) that provide different and complicated benefits, and to assure accurate compensation among these groups. Therefore a study of industrial practices is needed to assure the accuracy and efficiency of compensation and healthcare benefits for patients. On the other hand, measurement of services must be based on quality and convenience provided for patients, by using the existing condition prior to the implementation of hospital information management, such as, waiting/response time, average length of stay (ALOS), and unnecessary admission (IPD) as a benchmark to measure the quality improvement to maximize patients’ benefits. It was found that the condition after the implementation of information management, the waiting/response time was reduced by 26.5%, ALOS was reduced by 24%, but there was no significant reduction in the unnecessary admission (IPD). In addition it was found that practices and procedures were implemented to solve the problems of multiple priorities, which helped the front-reception personnel to confidently provide quality service.