MOUNTAIN VIEW COMMUNITY HOSPITAL Database Technology Case Study

Project Questions…

Question #1 �What are some of the important benefits that Mountain View Community Hospital should seek in using databases? As much as possible, relate your response to the hospital environment.

Question #1 ü It is important for every company to have a storeroom of data that is allowable to be accessed by authorized employees or even by customers on a limited basis. Hospitals are divided into several departments and a lot of information such as patient details, doctor’s schedule, room occupants and so forth are to be shared.

Question #1 ü Since the Mountain View Hospital has applications including Patient Care Administration, Clinical Services, Financial Management and Administrative Service and are linked through a clientserver technology, their database (Departmental Database) is suited to their needs and capabilities.

Question #1 ü It is only the matter of proper implementation and standards that has to be developed and changed. The data acquired on databases among different applications shall be reliable and coherent so that there will be consistency on the information gained among patient name, patient number, patient address, etc.

Question #2 �What are some of the costs and risks of using databases that the hospital must manage carefully?

Question #2 ü They should take precaution on loss of data integrity since the hospital implements and has applications purchased from outside vendors, there is a need to hire and train personnel to design and to implement their database so that there would be less data inconsistency and duplication.

Question #2 ü They should also cope with the cost, management and maintenance of database, given that there is a need to keep up and update the data their handling particularly among their patient’s information and patient’s charges.

Question #2 ü Along with the management, the hospital should also have explicit backup and recovery. Because when damage and environment catastrophe happen the database should be secured and recovered.

Question #3 � At present, Mountain View Community Hospital is using relational database technology. Although this technology is appropriate for structured data such as patient or accounting data, it is less well suited to unstructured data such as graphical data and images.

Question #3 � Can you think of some types of data maintained by a hospital that fit this latter category? What types of database technology might be better suited to these data types rather than relational?

Question #3 ü Hospitals keep records such as list of patients, patient details and results, room occupations and assigned doctors that are dynamic, meaning, it changes constantly and requires to be updated as often as every day.

Question #3 ü It would be very efficient for Mountain View Community Hospital to consider using operational database. Operational database technology is designed to keep data that needs to be collected and modified on a daily basis.

Question #4 � How are data in the PATIENT and PATIENT CHARGES table related? That is, how can a user find the relevant charges for a particular patient?

Question #4 ü The PATIENT and PATIENT CHARGES shares the PATIENT NUMBER attribute. The patient number serves as the reference for the PATIENT TABLE. The charges incurred by the patient is referred to the patient through the patient number.

Question #5 �What are some ways the hospital could use the internet?

Question #5 � Mountain View Community Hospital, though it is a small and not-for-profit, it is advisable for them to make use of internet as much as other hospitals do. Online Inquiry, hospital departments’ contact numbers, list of doctors and their specializations are few of those that the hospital could provide through the internet.

Question #6 �Give an example of how the hospital could use each of the types of databases described in the chapter: personal, workgroup, departmental, enterprise, and internet.

Question #6 ü Personal databases can be used for keeping the patients’ records(names, diagnoses and more), Workgroups for the medical team that will be conducting surgeries, and other duties than need collaboration.

Question #6 ü Department databases for the workers, employees and professional records and Enterprise databases are used to check the total activities and business operations at the facility.

PROJECT EXERCISES

(1) Database Patient Charges Patient Name Patient Number Patient Address Item Description Amount Item Code

(2) Name Type Length Description Name Alphanumeric 30 Patient Name ID Integer 10 Patient Number Address Alphanumeric 40 Patient Address Code Integer 15 Item Code Description Alphanumeric 30 Item Description Amount Integer 6 Amount of Item

(3) Patient Name: Dolan, Mark Patient Number: 4238 Patient Address: 818 River Run Item Code 200 275 700 Item Description Room Semi-Private Radiology EEG Test Amount 1600 150 200

(4) Hospital Ward Employee Physician Patient Charge