NURS FPX 6008 Assessment 2: Needs Analysis for Change
Student name
Capella University
NHS 6008
Professor Name
Submission Date
Needs Analysis for Change
The medical technology is rapidly developing, and this has brought drastic changes in various areas such as clinical practices, organizational operations, and interaction with patients in the healthcare setting in the USA. The introduction of EHRs, telemedicine solutions, artificial intelligence applications in decision support, and remote monitoring of patient technologies has become an inseparable part of health care services (World Health Organization, 2025). Due to its beneficial impact on the increase of efficiency, diagnostic abilities, and collaboration between health care specialists and institutions. However, the economic implications associated with using innovative technology have become the major stumbling block to implementation in health care institutions. The cost of implementing new technologies and providing further maintenance, protection, and training of personnel can be identified as rather high costs to smaller health care institutions that are remote and far.
Summarizing the Chosen Economic Issue and Its Impact
The economic issue selected is regarding the high cost of the advanced technology in healthcare organizations and the inequality in accessing the technology. Even though advanced technology plays an essential role in improving efficiency and safety, among other factors, its expenses pose a challenge to implementing it. Advanced technology can be easily embraced by rich healthcare organizations due to their financial capability. Conversely, the small hospitals and rural clinics are unable even to use simple technological innovations because of financial problems (Stoumpos et al., 2023). The economic issue has a great impact on the practice environment, organizational performance, peers, and the community in general. Research has established that a lack of preparation to adopt new systems influences the workload of health care professionals and causes stress and inefficiency (Lee et al., 2025). The system always requires clinicians to adapt to the system in order to deliver quality services in the healthcare field. Such a situation puts pressure on health care professionals, especially when adopting new systems.
Impacts on Colleges and Organizations
The practical implications of unequal use of medical technology will impact the medical colleagues and organizational performance. When health care providers switch between one technology and another, and especially when they lack the opportunity to get training, these health care providers will be compelled to experience an escalation in their cognitive load, which will result in poor job satisfaction, burnout, and inefficiency in the provision of services to the clients. Moreover, uneven utilization of technology will have an impact on organizations. The lack of funds will cause the institutions to have outdated technology and, therefore, increase their chance of making mistakes in the documentation and management of care processes. Yusuf et al. (2025) are correct in pointing out that organizations that lack an adequate technological capability will be faced with inefficiencies in the provision of patient care and management of the organization. The poor organizational processes will put organizations in a situation of financial troubles.
Rationale for Pursuing the Issue
It is necessary to address this problem immediately as it has a direct relation to the issues of patient safety, organizational sustainability, and health inequities. Nowadays, technologies are becoming increasingly vital in terms of the provision of high-quality medical services; nevertheless, the issue is related to their access, as it is limited due to a lack of funding. Studies indicate that patient well-being, short length of stay, and improved organizational results are the outcomes of the usage of the technologically advanced facilities in the hospital setting (Thacharod et al., 2024). In addition, due to their restricted availability, all these advantages can only be enjoyed by bigger health organizations. The final rationale to discuss this issue is due to the need to reduce health disparities. Telemedicine can give easier access to medical assistance to the rural population; however, its underdevelopment does not allow this to happen.
Existing Gap in the Issue
The lack of fair access to the financial resources and technological devices needed to implement the technology is yet another major gap that exists in consideration of the discussed economic issue. Particularly, large or urban hospitals are financially stable, and small and rural hospitals have less financial means at their disposal. This aspect affects the rate of implementation and the efficiency of the implementation of new technologies like AI software tools and EHRs. As an example, as Ahmed et al. (2023) say, the implementation of artificial intelligence in health care is more prevalent in well-funded hospitals than in those located in rural areas due to the differences in financial and technological literacy.
Ethical, Evidence-Based Practice Guidelines and Stakeholder Impact
In the intervention, evidence-based interventions should be justified using ethical considerations in order to minimise the reported gaps in performances in order to make the implementation of such interventions fair and effective across different populations. The systematic reviews indicate that structured discharge planning that integrates drug reconciliation, patient education, and early follow-up can reduce heart failure readmission by 16.6 to 50%, respectively, depending on the intensity of the interventions (Tran et al., 2025). A set of culturally modified instructional materials in different languages, consideration of the level of health literacy, assessment of social determinants of health, such as transportation and housing stability, and attention to patient autonomy are all that is needed to make an ethical decision considering the discharge planning decision-making (Browder et al., 2023). The proposed guidelines directly impact the nursing staff, with an increase in the patient education roles, pharmacists, as they are obliged to balance more of the medication reconciliation roles, physicians, as they are obliged to increase the discharge documentation requirements, and the case managers, as they are obliged to increase the follow-up coordination efforts.
Identification of Disparity
These factors associated with the socio-demographic and geographical inequities are regarded as critical as they could influence the access to the new technological advancements by patients. Thus, in this situation, it is worth noting that those problems may primarily target individuals living in rural areas and belonging to disadvantaged groups since hospitals in such regions do not have enough money and have outdated technology (Coombs et al., 2022). Moreover, it should be noted that there is a shortage of specialists in these areas as well. Thus, it will become very hard as those people will be incapable of using some technologies, in particular, telemedicine, electronic health records, remote monitoring, and so on.
The use of electronic health records and telemedicine in the rural setting and hospitals is underdeveloped compared to the urban environment (Anzalone et al., 2025). The technology application has some negative aspects for health care since a patient cannot be diagnosed at an early stage. Moreover, it is also impossible to reach a specialist via technology and make use of the decision support system that utilizes artificial intelligence (Sharma et al., 2023). The disadvantage is mainly related to individuals having chronic illnesses like diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.
Finding Peer-Reviewed Sources
The existence of numerous empirical studies that have demonstrated the importance of overcoming financial barriers in the medical field innovation is abundant. For instance, based on the arguments provided by Modi et al. (2024), electronic health records are significant in providing a record of procedures carried out, ensuring patients’ safety and coordination of the process. However, significant investments and preparations are needed before these innovations can be implemented. Similarly, Yusuf et al. (2025) disclose that telemedicine is a vital aspect in enhancing access and lowering healthcare costs, but is hampered by funding and infrastructure. Moreover, Sharma et al. (2023) argue that the application of artificial intelligence in the health care sector is efficient, even though other factors hinder innovations. Finally, according to Jeilani & Hussein (2025), lack of proper training may cause inefficiency, as well as stress on medical practitioners. Using all the above factors, it can be concluded that the challenge of dealing with financial, infrastructural, and human barriers within the innovation process is critical in the medical world.
Predicted Outcomes and Growth Opportunity
The use of methods that have been applied in solving economic problems that emerge with the adoption of technology in the medical field is likely to bring positive outcomes to the treatment, as well as the efficiency of the sector. Firstly, the state of the patients will be improved due to the presence of health information systems, and there will be no errors in the process of administering the medications (Okwor et al., 2024). The implementation of better processes, the elimination of duplications, and collaboration between the employees will make the hospitals effective. Cost-cutting in hospitals will be realized through reduced hospital admissions, resource wastage, and process wastage. When it comes to the health and job satisfaction of health care providers, adequate training and development are likely to yield results for their health and work performance. Cooperation will be achieved with the appropriate use of EMR.
Cost Benefits for Patients and the Organization
The benefits that might be obtained from resolving the problem by applying the suggested solution through the prism of economics should be analyzed from two different angles – the consumers’ and healthcare institutions’. To begin with, the innovation would contribute to saving time, preventing the need to visit the hospital on a case-by-case basis, managing chronic conditions, etc. Moreover, telemedicine might be developed, which will reduce the expenses related to transportation of patients and delivery of healthcare services in rural settings (Ezeamii, 2024). Secondly, an institutional perspective would mean that, through innovation, it would be possible to tackle the issues of inefficiency of the processes, including billing problems. Good results will be achieved financially by both innovations and staff members, as good services will be offered.
Conclusion
The issues of economics regarding innovations in medical technology pose a problem to today’s healthcare facilities. Though there are plenty of benefits linked to the implementation of innovative medical technology, it is its high costs that make the implementation issue extremely important for most institutions. This distinction between these two views is made clear when one is discussing the application of innovative medical technology to a rural area where the necessary infrastructure is nonexistent. Through a needs assessment, it is evident that there are several challenges, which include money, infrastructure, and education.
References
Ahmed, M. I., Spooner, B., Isherwood, J., Lane, M. A., Orrock, E., & Dennison, A. (2023). A systematic review of the barriers to the implementation of artificial intelligence in healthcare. Cureus, 15(10). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10623210/
Anzalone, A. J., Geary, C. R., Dai, R., Watanabe-Galloway, S., McClay, J. C., & Campbell, J. R. (2025). Lower electronic health record adoption and interoperability in rural versus urban physician participants: A cross-sectional analysis from the CMS quality payment program. BioMed Central Health Services Research, 25(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-024-12168-5
Coombs, N. C., Campbell, D. G., & Caringi, J. (2022). A qualitative study of rural healthcare providers’ views of social, cultural, and programmatic barriers to healthcare access. BioMed Central Health Services Research, 22(1), 438. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-022-07829-2
Ezeamii, V. (2024). Revolutionizing healthcare: How telemedicine is improving patient outcomes and expanding access to care. Cureus, 16(7). https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.63881
Jeilani, A., & Hussein, A. (2025). Impact of digital health technologies adoption on healthcare workers’ performance and workload: Perspective with DOI and TOE models. BioMed Central Health Services Research, 25(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12913-025-12414-4
Lee, A. T., Ramasamy, R. K., & Subbarao, A. (2025). Barriers to and facilitators of technology adoption in emergency departments: A comprehensive review. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 22(4), 479–479. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph22040479
Okwor, I. A., Hitch, G., Hakkim, S., Akbar, S., Sookhoo, D., & Kainesie, J. (2024). Digital technologies impact on healthcare delivery: A systematic review of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine-learning (ML) adoption, challenges, and opportunities. AI, 5(4), 1918–1941. https://doi.org/10.3390/ai5040095
Sharma, S., Rawal, R. S., & Shah, D. J. (2023). Addressing the challenges of AI-based telemedicine: Best practices and lessons learned. Journal of Education and Health Promotion, 12(1), 338–338. https://doi.org/10.4103/jehp.jehp_402_23
Stoumpos, A. I., Kitsios, F., & Talias, M. A. (2023). Digital transformation in healthcare: Technology acceptance and its applications. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 20(4). NCBI. https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/20/4/3407
Thacharodi, A., Singh, P., Meenatchi, R., Tawfeeq Ahmed, Z. H., Kumar, R. R. S., V, N., Kavish, S., Maqbool, M., & Hassan, S. (2024). Revolutionizing healthcare and medicine: The impact of modern technologies for a healthier future—A comprehensive review. Health Care Science, 3(5). https://doi.org/10.1002/hcs2.115
World Health Organization. (2025). Digital health. World Health Organization. https://www.who.int/health-topics/digital-health#tab=tab_2
Yusuf, A., Olaniyan, L., Ayobami, H. S., Hudallah, K., & Igbin, L. A. (2025). The role of technology in enhancing healthcare administration and service delivery. CogNexus, 1(02), 37–50. https://doi.org/10.63084/cognexus.v1i02.77
FAQs
Q1: What is a needs analysis in healthcare?
It involves the evaluation of the status quo and comparison with the desired future scenario to find out whether there is anything that needs addressing.
Q2: Why is a needs analysis critical in implementing change in the healthcare sector?
The analysis provides the necessary insight into the current problems and priorities so that one can make plans on how to bring about the necessary changes.
Q3: What is a needs analysis procedure?
There are several things included such as the definition of the problem, collection and analysis of data, performance evaluation, gap identification, and prioritization of gaps.
Q4: What types of information are collected through a needs analysis process?
Both qualitative and quantitative data are collected in order to get a true picture of the current situation and its determinants.