Business and Technical Decision-Making for CareGroup

Case Analysis: CareGroup
Name
Department, Institution Affiliation
Course Code; Course Name
Instructor's Name
Date
Case Analysis: CareGroup
Question 1
Business and technical decisions play a significant role in streamlining healthcare organizations' systems and growth. Business decisions are key decisions that influence activities, goals, and business operations. Technical decisions are majorly aligned to systems that impact the business or organizations. Boston's CareGroup is an essential company in business and technical decision-making due to its involvement in IT operations and network issues. The organization faces a problem based on the identified decisions. Besides, key decisions were made or had been made contributing to network outages. The decisions are classified as business and technology-related.
Business Decisions
The first decision made before 2002 that promoted network outage was a poor business merger. From the case study, it is indicated that the CareGroup is a poor merger. The case study shows that approximately four hospitals came together to enhance CareGroup's network. However, it seems the decisions of the merger were not based on critical business analysis and how it would significantly contribute to higher network performance. For instance, due to poor merger decisions and increased pressure, Mount Auburn Hospital, one of the financial contributors of the CareGroup, recorded a loss of $ 10 million while Baptist Hospital incurred a loss of $20 million (Mcfarlan & Austin, 2005). The identified losses were the onset of the network outage. Therefore, such losses would have been avoided whenever business analysis could have been done effectively by considering the competitive environment and the merger.
The second business is done before 2022 is cutting the capital expenditures for IT installation. For instance, three years before 2003, the group reduced the expenditure by 90%, adversely impacting most of the operations. IT installation heavily relied on the capital budget. Therefore, it heavily impacted the network outage in the group (Mcfarlan & Austin, 2005). For instance, Meditech installations were conducted without a reliable consultative process. Despite the benefits of cost reduction, it harmed the 2002 network outage. Therefore, there would be an appropriate budget plan to safeguard the IT installations to avoid future problems, as noted in the 2002 outage.
Technical Decisions
The first technical decision was a decentralized and non-standardized operation. The case study shows that Halamka took over an IT organization that was decentralized and non-standardized, thus significantly impacting the 2002 network outage. Despite the merger, every hospital ran the legal systems, which jeopardized collective technical decision-making and the long-term viability of CareGroup's network system. For instance, Deaconess Medical Center recorded complications in computer systems by having to run the system of every organization, and it was also comprised of a few PCs. Therefore, focusing on a decentralized organization led to technical problems that later promoted the 2002 network outage.
Lastly, the key technical decision that would have been made before November 2002 to av...