Consolidated Project Plan SOFTWARE

· Online banking and payment capability for the practice and patients

· Online scheduling for patients and schedule management for internal users

· Acceptance and processing of dental claims and billing

· Office needs to be outfitted with workstations and other IT infrastructure

· Project budget max is estimated at $150,000

· System should scale in the event of increased patients or employees

· By installing the new IT system, the clinic will be able to move to a larger location and do more business without having to hire additional staff. This will save the stakeholders money in the long term and create a user-friendly interface for their patients. It will also create a foundation for a scalable practice as they begin to expand their client base and hire more dentists and hygienists.

Project Overview

The feasibility study will be done based on the dental clinics flow of information. Currently, the dental clinic has no IT system in place and all processes are performed manually. The feasibility study will be used to understand the scope of the problem and outline an IT solution that will better manage the daily processes taking place at the dental clinic. The feasibility study will identify the solutions that will be developed to meet the requirements of the dental clinic owner. The IT system will create electronic processes that will allow the patients and the employees access to dental services and input payments. The IT system will generate electronic invoices that will be sent directly to the patient’s inbox where they can then make a payment and receive an electronic receipt, saving paper for both the patient and the practice. Patients will gain access to the system by registering for an account online and creating an authentic user name and password.

The feasibility study will give important insight on the information technology project for the dental clinic and will be the basis for implementing a system that meet the requirements of both the internal and external users. The budget will be analyzed to determine if the hardware requirements like data cables, computers and tablets to be bought and the costs of designing and coding a system will be within the budget. This is the first step to developing or creating a dental information system project. The planning for the dental information system will be performed by reviewing the scope of the problems that have been put into focus through the feasibility study. The feasibility study brings into perspective each problem that is to be solved by the information system. The solutions include appointment booking by the patients, electronic payments, information on dental procedures, and coordination between different internal departments to ensure a smooth processes at the dental clinic.

After the feasibility study has been completed, the step that follows is planning. Planning is the arranging or putting into a systematic order the steps that will be followed. It includes having meetings as a group, establishing dates and determining if the process of creating the IT system can be met by the expected completion date. The planning includes defining roles for each of the members. The contact person from the small dental clinic is Dr. Robert Jr, the information that should be provided or selected from the dental clinic. Planning is done to create a time table to set a timeframe for start, ending, and milestone dates to show how the project is progressing. Planning reduces complexity and determines specific goals that are to be scored into each step of the dental information system (Pakorny, 2010). In the planning phase, roles will be assigned to each team member in dental information system development. The Chairperson is the client who owns the dental clinic. The chairperson secures funds to complete the project. The chairperson has secured $150,000 to be used for the development of the dental information system project. The chairperson will represent the small dental clinic. The other roles include the project management team, which manages the day to day operations of the project.

After the planning has been completed, the next step to be conducted is analysis. In the analysis phase the problems to be solved by the dental system are broken down into manageable parts. It includes putting into perspective the problems that the system will solve. It has been established that the small dental clinic has no IT system in place and the analysis will only take information and data from the files that are kept by the receptionist and bookkeeper in the day to day running of the dental clinic. Routine activities as identified by the analysis team include what Dr. Bob and Dr. Robert Jr. want, which is an online portal that supports patient registration, payment and appointment booking; as well as supplier payment. Information of new dental procedures, processing dental insurance claims and billing are also modules that are to be included in the dental clinical information system. The dental information system will be accessed via the web browser and will be available, responsive and secure to ensure that users and customers can access the website from anywhere at any time while conforming to Federal regulations.

The third step that will be followed having done the planning and analysis is the designing. In the design phase, the information description will be critical in getting a responsive dental web-based system. All the information while coding using HTML and XML should have remarks or comments to help in identifying what the data is and will allow programmers to better understand the code when future upgrades are made. As found by Langer (2007), diagrams showing the flow of information in each scenario, for example, the bookkeeper clearing a client after payment and sending the invoice number or code of the payment to authenticate he/she is the one who paid the invoiced amount on the dental services provided. The bookkeeper will first send an electronic claim to the patient’s insurance company for processing and payment. Any amount not covered by the insurance will be invoiced electronically to the patient. Once the payment is made the bookkeeper will receive an alert to reconcile the patient’s account.

Apart from the information description, the functional descriptions will be developed based on the type of input that is required. An example is a calendar system will be used and patients can only input date values into that filed. The calendar will display open appointments and the patient will be free to choose from them for the particular provider they are scheduling with. The appointment system will send a conformation message to the receptionist and the patient to ensure that day and time booked are accurate. The same will be in the case of a dentist appointment that is canceled (Ahmed et el, 2007).

Validation description involves ensuring that all the data to be processed are in the required format in the designing process. The numbers, alphabet, and symbols will only be allowed in the field that they are allowed. In case the data is not allowed there will be an informative message on the type of data to enter and will not work until the required data type has been entered. In the case of validation of mobile numbers, the system will send an automatic number to which the patient can use to validate the registration linking them to the phone number. While designing the system the other factor that one should include is refinement. This is where the design team will perform quality assurance tests to make sure that the system is functioning as intended. For example, management information should not be accessed by clients and vice versa while getting the information based on the server as argued by Pakorny (2010).

Modularity in when designing the framework will allow each part of the system to be built independently. This allows for easier coding, faster error finding, and will speed up the overall process of building the system.

The fourth step that after completing the feasibility study, planning, analysis and designing phases is the implementation. According to Ahmed et el (2007), the implementation team will be deploying the system. This includes installing the hardware, which includes the desktop for the receptionist and the bookkeeper. Each dentist, hygienist, and dental assistant will be assigned a laptop to use throughout the work day. During the appointment they will access the patient’s dental record and select dental procedures performed during the visit and complete any necessary notes to be stored in the patient’s electronic dental record. This will generate a summary of service which the bookkeeper will then use to input the charges to the patient’s account and prepare an electronic claim to be sent to the patient’s insurance for payment. The wireless network will be established and each laptop and desktop will have a wireless card to which it will be able to access the internet. The operating system and the wireless printer connections will also be established. Most of the data will be paperless and the printers will only be used when producing hard copies when desired. The implementation team will also configure all the hardware and train the dentist, the hygienist, dental assistants, receptionist and bookkeeper on their respective systems. Last but not least is the maintenance of the dental information system which will be done by the operation team. According to the Avsion & Fitzgerald (2002), the operation team deals with the maintenance of the information system, for example, the errors that result from inputting the wrong data. The operations teams will also handle establishing the database hosting and website hosting, overseeing the overall process of the system, and acting as the system administrator by assigning user privileges and rights. The operations team is responsible for configuring and providing support to the user where they find difficulties.

· Client has secured funding for the IT system to be developed and implemented.

· Software is available that is capable of processing dental insurance claims and billing.

· Implemented system will be compliant with all HIPPA regulations through the use of group policy, multi-factor authentication, and least privilege account permissions (Office for Civil Rights (OCR), 2016).

· Eight tablets (One for each dentist and one for each hygienist)

· High capacity network data storage with automatic HIPAA compliant cloud backups

· High Speed Business Class 50Mbps bandwidth connection

· Base network gear (router, switch, firewall, Ethernet at each desk, WiFi).

· X-Ray management software

· Dental record management software

· Security solutions

· Financial management software

· Insurance management software

· Google Applications for administrative needs (email, cloud storage, office suite)

· Two desk printers (One for bookkeeper, one for receptionist) and one commercial copier/printer/fax/scanner for shared office use

· Customer Portal with web frontend and database backend for payment, record, and insurance management

· Identify scope of the project

· Confirm project deliverables

· Project Resource allocation

· Create Project Plan

· Determine system requirements

· Determine network requirements

· Determine electronic file system requirements

· Perform risk management assessment

6/14/2016

· Determine system resource needs

· Create network diagram

· Research ISP’s, vendors, products, and software

· Purchase parts, hardware, software, and licensing

6/30/2016

· Build IT systems and servers

· Create databases and install software

· Configure Third-Party and offsite connections

· Data entry to convert dental record to electronic file system

7/14/2016

· Ensure network requirements have been met

· Ensure electronic file system requirements have been met

· Perform training for customer and users

7/31/2016

· Use new system in daily dental office operations

· Observe any system errors or failures

8/15/2016

· Reassess and retrain as necessary