Technology And Management Functions

Technology and Management Functions Paper

Heidi Wilson

TEC 401

University of Phoenix

Instructor, Charlene Dunfee

August 12, 2007

Technology and Management Functions

Management of technological systems and businesses consists of four basic functions: planning, organizing, staffing, leading and controlling. During the planning function of management managers must analyze the work flow to see if any new systems would be beneficial to the productivity of the workers. In the organizing function of management the analysis of the work flow should be organized in a way that will prove or disprove that a new system would increase productivity of workers. The organization of information could come by writing simple pros and cons lists or developing a spreadsheet showing current times of how long it takes a worker to complete something. In the directing or leading function of management managers should understand the concerns of workers and always be open to their input. By asking questions of the workers, managers could get a better understanding of what type of programs to implement. In the controlling function of management the manager must have some control over the program and control over how and when the workers get trained to operate the program once a program is selected and put into place. Management at Vanderbilt Hospital knows that these four management functions are important to the patients overall comfort and convenience.

Technology at Vanderbilt

Vanderbilt University Medical Center is a great place to find all sorts of technology. There are machines that assist in patient care such as x-ray machines and dialysis machines that assist with patient's kidney functions. Vanderbilt has an internal email system that allows employees to send emails to each other and there are mailing lists that can be setup to send messages to numerous people at once. Managers rely on technology such as email to get a message to many people fast and these emails can be marked as urgent. The problem with this is that not all employees check their email regularly. There are patient tracker systems that track the amount of time a patient has been in a clinic and this system allows the user to track what procedures the patient has completed and what procedures still need to be done. The patient information system has all of the patient's pertinent information but also has safeguards in place to comply with HIPAA regulations. HIPAA is "the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996" and this act contains federal privacy protections for individually identifiable health information. (2006) The users of all of the mentioned systems are trained extensively since the information that is put into the system could mean life or death of a patient. Employees are trained to sign on and off the systems when they are not using them. Anytime a note needs to be made on a patient's file the employee must sign into a system to make the note. By being trained to sign on and sign off this ensures that the proper employee makes the notations needed on the patient's file. There are two large departments that oversee the computer systems at Vanderbilt. There is an ITS, or Information Technology Services, department as well as a NCS department.