Earlier, you read that an m.Care department groups together a collection of care team members who are watching over a population of subjects. Here we will walk you through more information about the concept of the department.
Production and Test Departments
m.Care supports the creation of any number of departments. When a new customer signs up to use m.Care, the m.Care team typically creates two departments for their use… One to learn the concepts of the m.Care system and the second to be used as that customer’s first production department. The production department will be used to actively monitor real patients whereas the test department will be used to practice your skills and to try different ideas on how you want to manage your department before you roll those ideas out into your production department.
Naming your Department
Every department must have a name. The name should uniquely identify the department in a way that makes sense to your organization. For example, if your department were to be actively monitoring a collection of cardiology patients, a good department name would be “Cardiology”.
Every department also has a short “nickname” associated with it. This short name is displayed by the monitor in various places where an abbreviation makes sense. A good nickname or short name for our Cardiology department might be CARD.
Department Manager
When you create a department, not only do you give it a name, but you also nominate an m.Care user to be the department manager. The department manager should be thought of as the security officer for the department. It is the department manager that can determine the rights and user access of all patient and care team members in the department. The department manager is the only level of user who can send an invitation to another user to become a care team member. The department manager basically is responsible for setting all policies associated with the department and for ensuring the security practices of the department.
Often times, when the m.Care team sets up a new department for a new customer, they will nominate one of the m.Care team members to hold the role of department manager until a member of the customer’s staff has been trained and understands how to perform the duties of the department manager. At that point, the m.Care team typically switches the department manager to the customer’s nominated employee.
Much of the department manager’s work within the monitor is through the use of the department notebook and the configuration tools provided by the monitor.