license: llama2
APPEND X A
CASES FOR
ASSIGNMENTS
ABACUS PRINTING B Orders are printed and become internal job tickets _— which are used to schedule and monitor work COMPANY progress. All order/job tickets go to the scheduler
who sorts and prioritizes them to develop a produc-
This case describes a currently manual process. Your 00 «hedule. Fach Monday, he gives the first person job is to automate the order processing, scheduling, i; the work chain (there are three possible sequences and customer service functions. Make sure you list of processing) the job tickets for completion that any assumption you make during analysis and eek As the week progresses, he adds to or changes design. oo } oo the schedule by altering the order and adding new
Abacus Printing Company is a $20-million busi- ickets to the stack of each person beginning a work
ness owned and operated by three longtime friends. hain Fach job goes through the same basic steps: They are automating their order processing for the
first time. Abacus Printing is located in Atlanta, Step 1. Perform requested manufacturing (i.e. Georgia and employs 20 people full-time. the engraving or printing work) accord-
The owners are the sales force. The company ing to the job ticket instructions. 1s set up so that each owner sells for a differ- Step 2. Verify quality of printed items and count ent, wholly-owned subsidiary (A Sub, B Sub, and output, that is, actual printed sheets of C Sub) to separate commissions and expenses for paper or envelopes. Write the actual tax purposes. Below is a description of the work to count of items to be shipped on the job be automated. ticket.
Three clerks do order entry and customer service. Step 3. Update the order/job ticket with actual An order is given to one of the three clerks to be en- shipment information; print shipping tered into the order entry part of the system. Orders papers and invoices which reflect actual are batched by subsidiary for processing in the sys- shipments. tem. There is at least one batch per clerk per day. Step 4. Bundle, wrap, and ship the order.
When a batch is complete, orders are printed. After
orders are printed, the system should maintain indi- The updating of the order with actual shipment vidual orders for processing (i.e., the integrity of information may be done by either the shipping clerk the batch is no longer needed). or by the same person who entered the order. The
790 second printing ‘closes’ the order from any other changes and results in a multipart form being printed. Two of the parts are copies of the invoices, showing all prices and other charges with a total amount due. One invoice copy is sent to the cus- tomer; the other is filed for further processing by accounts receivable. The third part of the set of forms is the bill of lading, or shipping papers, that shows all information except money amounts. The fourth part of the form is filed numerically by invoice number in a sequential history file. The fifth part is filed in a customer file which is kept in alphabetic sequence.
The system must allow order numbering by sub- sidiary company, and must be able to print different subsidiary name headers on the forms. The clerks batch orders so that only orders from one subsidiary are in each batch. Order types include recurring orders, blanket orders (which cover the year with shipments spaced out over the period), and orders with multiple ship-to addresses that differ from the sold-to addresses.
When customers call to change or determine the status of an order, the clerk taking the call first checks the customer file to see if the order is com- plete. Then, he or she checks with the scheduler to see if the order is in the current day's manufacturing mix. If the order is not complete or scheduled, he or she manually searches current orders to find the paperwork. About 15% of customer calls are answered while the customer is on the phone. About 80% require research and are answered with a call back within 30 minutes. The remaining 5% require tracking, which results in identifying an order taken verbally by a partner and never written down. Cus- tomers have been complaining of the lost orders and threatening to go elsewhere with their business.
The current computer system is a smart type- writer and storage facility. The owner wants to pro- vide personal computer access via a local area network for the three partners, three clerks, two shipping staff, and one scheduler. He would like to eliminate the numerical and alphabetical paper filing systems but wants to maintain the information on-line indefinitely for customer service queries.
The managers want ad hoc reporting access to the information at all times. The senior clerk is also the
AOS Tracking System 791
accounting manager and, along with the owner, should be allowed access to an override function to correct errors in the system. The other clerks should be allowed to perform data entry for order process- ing and actual goods shipped, and to print invoices/ shipping papers. The shipping clerk should be al- lowed to perform order updates with actual goods shipped and to generate shipping papers with a final invoice. The scheduler should be allowed access to all outstanding orders to alter and schedule work for the manufacturing processes. No one else in the company should be allowed access to the system or to the data.
AOS TRACKING SYSTEM
The AOS case is a logical description of a desired application that also includes manual problems to be corrected.
The manager of Administrative Office Services (AOS) wants to develop an automated application to track work through its departments. The depart- ments and services provided include: word process- ing and proofing, graphic design, copying, and mailing. Work can come into any of the departments, and any number of services might be combined. For instance, word processing and proofing can be the only service. Word processing, proofing, and graphic design might be combined. Another job might include all of the services.
The current situation is difficult because each manager has some knowledge of the work in his or her own area, but not where work is once it leaves their area. Overall coordination for completing jobs using multiple services requires the AOS manager to give each department a deadline. Then, the AOS manager must track the jobs to ensure that they are completed and moved along properly.
The basic work in each department is to receive a job, check staff availability based on work load and skills, assign staff, priority, and due date, and up- date job information (for instance, if the work is reassigned). Jobs are identified by a unique control number that is assigned to each job. Other job information maintained includes: requestor name, 792 APPENDIX Cases for Assignments
requestor phone, requestor budget code, manner of receipt (either fax, paper, or phone dictation), man- ner of delivery (either fax, paper, or phone dictation), and dates and times work is received, due, com- pleted, canceled, notified, and returned to requestor.
A job consists of requests for one or more types
of service. For each type of service, information must also be kept. Services include word processing and proofing, copying, graphic design, and mailing.
Information kept for word processing and proof- ing services includes a description of the job, type of request (letter, memo, statistics, legal document, special project, chart, manual, labels, etc.), other ser-
vices included with this request (i.e., copying, graphic design, mailing), software to be used (Word- Perfect, Harvard Graphics, Lotus, Bar Coding, Other), type of paper (logo, plain bond, user pro- vided, envelope, other), color of paper (white, pink, blue, green, buff, yellow, other), paper size (8.5" x 11", 8.5" x 14", other), special characteristics(2- hole punch, 3-hole punch, other), type of enve- lope (letter, legal, letter window, legal window, bill, kraft 9" x 12", kraft 10" x 13", supplied by requestor, other), number of copies requested, user control number, dates/times required, started, completed, reassigned, proof started, proof completed, revisions started, and revisions completed.
Information kept for copying includes the above except software and dates/times relating to proofing and revisions. In addition, keep requirements for col- lating, stapling, one-side or two-side, special formats (e.g., reduced 60% and put side-by-side in book format).
Information kept for graphic design and mailing includes that for word processing, except type of envelope. The code schemes for type of request, paper, software, and special characteristics are dif- ferent from those used for word processing. For instance, paper for graphics refers to type of output media which might actually include slide, trans- parency, paper, envelope, video still, photograph, moving video, and so on. The type of request must be expanded to include the number of colors, spe- cific color selections, intended usage (intracompany, external, advertising, public relations, other) and level of creativity (i.e., user provides graphic and this department automates the design; user provides
concept and this department provides several alter- native designs, etc.).
Information kept for mailing includes requested completion date, and the dates and times requests were received, completed, and acknowledged back to requestor as complete. Other information includes whether or not address labels were provided, mailing list to be used (choice of four), number of pieces, method of mailing (e.g., zip+four, carrier route code, bar code, bulk, regular, special delivery, etc.), ma- chinery required (e.g., mail inserter, mail sorter, etc.), and source of mailing (e.g. word processing in AOS, user, other).
As a department's staff gets an incoming job, it should be logged into the system, assigned a log number, and the job information should be entered into the system. In addition, the receiving depart- ment completes their service-specific information (e.g., typing) and identifies the sequence of depart- ments which will work on the job. As the individual departments get their task information, they com- plete the service-specific fields.
Each department manager assigns a person to the task based on skills and availability. First, informa- tion matching service requests to staff skills should be done. Then, the staff with required skills should be ordered by their earliest availability date for assignment to the task. The system should allow tracking (and retrieval) of a task by job, department/ task, person doing the work, date of receipt, due date, or user.
The manager of AOS would like to receive a monthly listing of all comments received (usually they are complaints) and be able to query details of the job history to determine the need for remedial ac- tion. Comments should be linked to a job, service, user, and staff member.
THE CENTER
FOR CHILD
DEVELOPMENT
This case describes a currently manual process. The analysis and design task is to develop a new work
TABLE 1 Client Card File Information
Last Name First Name Middle Initial
Fiscal Year
Medicaid Number Family Identifier Line/Person Identifier Sex Year of Birth Diagnosis Code (NA) Issue Date
Dates of Visits
Fees per Week
Amount Paid
Balance Due (Updated Monthly)
flow and automated system for as much of the Medi- caid payment process as possible.
The Center for Child Development (CCD) is a not-for-profit agency that provides psychiatric coun- seling to children, serving approximately 600 clients per year. Each client has at least one visit to CCD per week when they are in therapy. Most often, the client has multiple visits to the center and to other agencies in one day (e.g., to CCD and, say, to a hospital). Medicaid reimburses expenses for only one such visit per day. This means that multiple appointments at CCD for a given day will have one appointment reimbursed; multiple claims on the same Medicaid number for the same day are paid on a first-in, first- paid basis by Medicaid. The current claims process- ing takes place monthly, for CCD to remain competitive, Medicaid processing must be done daily. To provide daily Medicaid processing, au- tomation of the process is required. The Medicaid Administration has arranged with personal computer owners to take claims in automated form on disk- ettes, provided that they conform to the information and format requirements of paper forms.
To develop Medicaid claims, the business office clerk reviews the client card file to obtain Medicaid number and visit information for each client (see Table 1 for Client Card File Information and Table 2 for Visit Card File Information recorded). Based
The Center for Child Development 793
on the card file information, Medicaid forms are completed: one per client with up to four visits listed on each form (see Table 3 for Medicaid information required). Most clients have multiple forms pro- duced because they have more than four visits to the center per month. Each form must be completed in its entirety (i.e., top and bottom) for Medicaid to process them (the forms cannot be batched by client with only variable visit information supplied).
One copy of each form is kept and filed in a Medicaid-Pending Claims File. The other copies of the forms (or disks) are mailed to Medicaid for processing.
About four to six weeks after submission of claims, Medicaid sends an initial determination report on each claim. The response media is either diskette or paper. Reconciliation of all paid amounts is done by manually matching the Medicaid report information with that from the original claim. If automated, report entries are in subscriber (i.e., CCD client) sequence. The paid claims are then filed in a Medicaid-Paid Claims File.
Claims that are disputed by Medicaid (almost 90% are pending on the initial report; of pending claims, 10-20% are ultimately denied) are re- searched and followed up with more information as required. Electronic reconciliation in other compa- nies reduces the 90%-pending to as few as 10%, thus speeding the reimbursement process. CCD has a contact at Medicaid with whom they work closely to resolve any problems.
TABLE 2 Visit Information
Day
Date
Type Appointment (i.e., Intake, Regular) Client Name
Time of Appointment Single/Group Visit Amount Paid Amount Owed Insurance Company Medicaid (YIN)
Last Date Seen Therapist
794 APPENDIX Cases for Assignments
TABLE 3
Medicaid Claim Form Information
Permanently Assigned Fields
Information Completed by CCD
Company Name (CCD)
Invoice Number (Assigned by Medicaid, preprinted on the forms)
Group ID Number (Not Applicable, i.e., NA) Location Code (03)
Clinic (827)
Category (0160)
Number of Attachments (NA) Office Number (NA)
Place of Service (NA)
Social Worker Type (NA) Coding Method (6) Emergency (N, i.e., No) Handicapped (N)
Disability {N)
Family Planning (N) Accident Code (0)
Patient Status (0)
Referral Code (0) Abort/Sterile Code (0)
Prior Approval Number (NA)
Ignore Dental Insurance (Y)
Billing Date (must be within 90 days of service) Recipient ID Number (Client Medicaid Number) Year of Birth
Sex
Recipient (Client) Name
Social Worker License Number
Name of Social Worker
Primary/secondary diagnosis (Table look-up, 120 entries) Date of Service
Procedure Code (This is a two-line entry to identify first the treatment payment on the first line and the treatment code on the second line.)
Procedure Description
Times Performed
Amount
Name of person completing the form
Date
(Information in parentheses is the permanent value of that field for CCD)
COURSE REGISTRATION SYSTEM
This case is a logical description of the desired application. Your task is to analyze and design the data and processes to develop an automated appli- cation to perform course registration.
A student completes a registration request form and mails or delivers it to the registrar's office. A clerk enters the request into the system. First, the
Accounts Receivable subsystem is checked to ensure that no fees are owed from the previous quarter. Next, for each course, the student transcript is checked to ensure that the course prerequisites are completed. Then, class position availability is checked; If all checks are successful, the student's social security number is added to the class list.
The acknowledgment back to the student shows the result of registration processing as follows: If fees are owing, a bill is sent to the student; no regis- tration is done and the acknowledgment contains the amount due. If prerequisites for a course are not filled, the acknowledgment lists prerequisites not met and that course is not registered. If the class is full, the student acknowledgment is marked with ‘course closed.' If a student is accepted into a class, the day, time, and room are printed next to the course number. Total tuition owed is computed and printed on the acknowledgment. Student fee information is interfaced to the Accounts Receivable subsystem.
Course enrollment reports are prepared for the instructors.
DR. PATEL'S
DENTAL PRACTICE SYSTEM
The dental practice uses a manual patient and billing system to serve approximately 1,100 patients. The primary components of the manual system are scheduling patient appointments, maintaining patient dental records, and recording financial infor- mation. Due to increased competitive pressure, Dr. Patel desires to automate his customer records and billing.
New patients must complete the patient history form. The data elements are listed in Table 1. Then, at the first visit, the dentist evaluates the patient and completes the second half of the patient history in- formation with standard dental codes (there are 2,000 codes) to record recommended treatments. The data elements completed by the dentist are listed as Table 2. The patient history form is filed in a manila folder, with the name of the patient as iden- tification, along with any other documents from sub- sequent visits.
A calendar of appointments is kept by the secre- tary, who schedules follow-up visits before the patient leaves the office. The calendar data elements are shown as Table 3. Also, before the patient leaves, any bills, insurance forms, and amounts due are computed. The client may pay at that time, or may opt for a monthly summary bill. The secretary main- tains bill, insurance, and payment information with the patient history. Financial data elements are shown in Table 4. Every week, the secretary types mailing labels that are attached to appointment
Dr. Patel's Dental Practice System 795
TABLE 1
Patient History Information
Patient name Address City State Zip Home telephone Date of birth Sex Parent's name (if under 21) or emergency contact Address City, state, zip
Telephone number Known dental problems (room for 1-3)
Known physical problems (room for 1-3) Known drug/medication allergies (room for 1-3)
Place of work name Address City State Zip Telephone number Insurance carrier City, state, zip Policy number
Last dentist name Address City, state, zip
Physician name City, state, zip
TABLE 2 Dentist Prognosis Information
Dentist performing evluation
Date of evaluation
Time of evaluation
Recommended treatment (room for 1-10 diagnoses and treatments)
Procedure code
Date performed (completed when performed)
Fee (completed when performed)
reminder cards and mailed. Once per month, the sec- retary types and sends bills to clients with outstand- ing balances. 796 APPENDIX Cases for Assignments
TABLE 3 Appointment Calendar
Patient name Horne telephone number Work telephone number Date of last service Date of appointment Time of appointment Type of treatment planned
TABLE 4 Patient Financial Information
Patient name Address City, state, zip Horne telephone number Work telephone number Date of service Fee Payment received Date of payment Adjustment Date of adjustment Outstanding balance Date bill sent Date overdue notice sent
THE EAGLE ROCK GOLF
LEAGUE
This is a logical description of a desired application. The task is to analyze and design the data and pro- cesses required to track golfers and rounds of golf, including computation of match rankings.
The members of the Eagle Rock Golf League reg- ularly compete in matches to determine their com- parative ability. A match is played between two golfers; each match either has a winner and a loser, or is declared a tie. Each match consists of a round of 18 holes with a score kept for each hole. The person with the lowest gross score (gross score = sum of all hole scores) is declared the winner. If not a tie, the
outcome of a match is used to update the ranking of players in the league: The winner is declared bet- ter than the loser and any golfers previously beaten by the loser. Other comparative rankings are left unchanged.
The application should keep the following infor- mation about each golfer: name, club ID, address, home phone, work phone, handicap, date of last golf round, date of last golf match, and current match ranking.
Each round of golf should also be tracked includ- ing golfer's club ID, name, scores for all 18 holes, total for the round, match indicator (i.e., Yes/No), match opponent ID (if indicator = Y), winner of the match, and date of the match. The application should allow golfers to input their own scores and allow any legal user to query any information in the system. Only the system should be allowed to change rank- ings. Errors in data entry for winters or losers should be corrected only by a club employee.
GEORGIA BANK
AUTOMATED TELLER ____ _ MACHINE SYSTEM
Georgia Bank describes an application to be devel- oped. The functional requirements are described at a high level of abstraction and the task is to do more detailed analysis or to begin design.
The Georgia Bank is automating an automated
teller machine (ATM) network to maintain its com-
petitive position in the market. The bank currently processes all deposit and withdrawal transactions manually and has no capability to give up-to-the- minute balance information. The bank has 200,000 demand-deposit account (DDA, e.g., checking ac- count) customers artd 100,000 time deposit (e.g., savings account) customers. All customers have the same account prefix with a two-digit account type identifier as the suffix.
The ATM system should provide for up to three transactions per customer. Transactions may be processed via ATM machines to be installed in each of the 50 branches and via the AVAIL™ network of Georgia banks. The system should accept an ATM identification card and read the ATM card number. The ATM card number is used to retrieve account in- formation including a personal ID number (PIN) and balances for each DDA and time account. The sys- tem should prompt for entry of the PIN and venfy its correctness. Then the system should prompt for type of transaction and verify its correctness.
For DDA transactions, the system prompts for amount of money to be withdrawn. The amount is verified as available, and if valid, the system instructs the machine to dispense the proper amount which is deducted from the account balance. If the machine responds that the quantity of money required is not available, the transaction is aborted. A transaction acknowledgment (customer receipt) is created. If the amount is not available or is over the allowable limit of $250 per day per account, an error message 1s sent back to the machine with instructions to reenter the amount or to cancel the transaction.
For time deposit transactions, the system prompts for amount of money to be deposited and accepts an envelope containing the transaction. The amount is added to the account balance in transit. A transaction acknowledgment is created.
For account balances, the system prompts for type of account-ODA or time-and creates a report of the amount. At the end of all transactions, or at the end of the third transaction, the system prints the transaction acknowledgment at the ATM and cre- ates an entry in a transaction log for all transactions. All other processing of account transactions will remain the same as that used in the current DDA and time deposit systems.
The customer file entries currently include cus- tomer ID, name(s), address, social security number, day phone, and for each account: account ID, date opened, current balance, link to transaction file (record of most recent transaction). The transaction file contains: account ID, date, transaction type, amount, source of transaction (i.e., ATM, teller ini- tials) and link to next most recent transaction record. The customer file must be modified to include the ATM ID and password. The transaction log file con- tains ATM ID, account ID, date, time, location, transaction type, account type, and amount.
Summer's Inc. Sales Tracking System 797
SUMMER'S INC.
SALES TRACKING, SYSTEM
This case describes a manual system for sales track- ing. Your design should include work procedures and responsibilities for all affected users.
Summer's Inc. is a family-owned, retail office- product store in Ohio. Recently, the matriarch of the family sold her interest to her youngest son who is automating as much of their processing as possible. Since accounting and inventory management were automated two years ago, the next area of major paper reduction is to automate retail sales to floor processing.
The sales floor has four salespersons who to- gether serve an average of 100 customers per day. There are over 15,000 items for sale, each available from as many as four vendors. The system should keep track of all sales, decrease inventory for each item sold, and provide an interface to the NR system for credit sales.
A sale proceeds as follows. A customer selects items from those on display and may request order- ing of items that are not currently available. For those items currently selected, a sales slip is created containing at least the item name, manufacturer's item number (this is not the same as the vendor's number), retail unit price, number of units, type of units (e.g. each, dozen, gross, ream, etc.), extended price, sales tax (or sales exemption number), and sale total. For credit customers, the customer name, ID number, and purchaser signature are also included. The sales total is entered into a cash regis- ter for cash sales and the money is placed into the register. A copy of the sales slip is given to the cus- tomer as a receipt, and a copy is kept for Summer's records. For orders or credit sales, the information kept includes customer name, ID number, sale date, salesman initials, and all details of each sales slip. For credit sales, a copy of credit sale information should be in an electronic interface to the accounting system where invoices are created.
In the automated system, both cash and credit sales must be accommodated, including the provi- sion of paper copy receipts for the client and for 798 APPENDIX Cases for Assignments
Summer's. The inventory database should be up- dated by subtracting quantity sold from units on hand for that unit type, and the total sales amount for the year-to-date sales of the item should be increased by the amount of the sale. The contents of the inventory database are shown in Table 1.
TABLE 1 Database
Summer's Inc. Inventory
General Item Information
Item Name (e.g. Flair Marker, Fine-Point Blue; Flair Marker, Wide-Point Blue, etc.) Item Manufacturer Date began carrying item Units information* Unit tvpe (e.g, each, dozen, gross, etc.) Retail unit cost Units on order Units on hand Total units sold in 1993
Vendor-Item Information* Vendor ID Vendor item ID Vendor-units information* Unit tvpe (e.g., each, dozen, gross, etc.) Last order date Discount schedule Wholesale unit cost
Vendor General Information
Vendor ID
Vendor name
Vendor address
Terms
Ship method
Delivery lead time Item-Information Vendoritem ID Unit tvpe (e.g., each, dozen, gross, etc.) Last order date Discount schedule Wholesale unit cost
(Note: Primary keys are underlined; repeating groups are identi- fied with a boldface name and an asterisk.)
TECHNICAL
CONTRACTING, INC.
Technical Contracting, Inc. (TCI) describes a man- ual process to be automated. The data and processes are approximately equally complex; both require some analysis and design before the automated application can be designed. First, decide what information in the problem description is relevant to an automated application for client-contractor matching, then proceed with the assignment.
TCI is a rapidly expanding business that contracts IS personnel to organizations that require specific technical skills in Dallas, TX. Since this business is becoming more competitive, Dave Lopez, the owner, wants to automate the processing of person- nel placement and resume maintenance.
The files of applicant resumes and skills are coded according to a predefined set of skills. About 10 new applicant resumes arrive each week. A clerk checks the suitability of the resume for the services TCI provides and returns unsuitable resumes with a
letter to the applicant. The applicant is invited to reapply when they have acquired skills that are in high demand, several of which are listed in the letter. High-demand jobs are determined by counting the type of requests that have been received in the last month. Resumes of applicants are added to the file with skills coded from a table. There are currently 200 resumes on file that are updated every six months with address, phone, skills, and project experience for the latest period. Most of the resume information is coded. There is one section per proj- ect for a text description. This section is free-form text and allows up to 2,500 characters of description. Client companies send their requests for special- ized personnel to TCI either by mail, phone, or per- sonal delivery. For new clients, one of TCI's clerks records client details such as name, ID, address, phone, and billing information. For each require- ment, the details of the job are recorded, including skill requirements (e.g., operating system, language, analysis skills, design skills, knowledge of file struc- tures, knowledge of DBMS, teieprocessing knowl- edge, etc.), duration of the task, supervisor name, supervisor level, decision authority name, level of difficulty, level of supervision required, and hourly rate. For established clients, changes are made as required.
Once a day, applicant skills are matched to client requirements. Then Dave reviews the resumes and, based on his knowledge of the personalities in- volved, selects applicants for interviewing by the client company. When Dave selects an applicant, the resume is printed and sent with a cover letter. Dave follows up the letter with a phone call three days later. If the client decides to interview the appli- cant(s), Dave first prepares them with a sample interview, then they are interviewed by the client.
Upon acceptance of an applicant, two sets of con- tracts are drawn up. A contract between TCI and the client company is developed to describe the terms of the engagement. These contracts can be compli- cated because they might include descriptions of dis- counts in billings that apply when multiple people are placed on the contract, or might include longevity discounts when contractors are engaged over a negotiated period of time. A contract between TCI and the applicant is developed to describe the terms of participation in the engagement. Basically, the applicant becomes an employee of Dave's orga- nization for the duration of the contract.
TCI keeps information on demand for each type of skill, whether they provide people with the skill or not. Dave also monitors TCI performance in filling requests for each skill and evaluating lost contracts due to nonavailability of applicants (to raise his fees for those services, and to advertise for those skills). TCI advertises for applicants with specific skills when client demand for new skills reaches three re- quests in any one month, or when demand for skills already on file increases to such an extent that the company is losing more than three jobs per month.
XV University Medical Tracking System 799
XY UNIVERSITY
MEDICAL
TRACKING
SYSTEM
The XY University case is a brief logical description of a simple tracking system with a complex data structure. The key to a good design is to analyze and define the data and services properly.
XY University student medical center serves a student population of 60,000 students and faculty in a large metropolitan area. Over 300 patients receive one or more medical services each day. The univer- sity has a new president who wishes to overhaul the existing medical support structure and modernize the facilities to improve the services. In order to plan for these changes, more information on which ser- vices are in fact used is required. The university wishes to develop a patient tracking system that traces each patient throughout their stay in school for each visit to the facility.
Students and faculty are identified by their identi- fication numbers. They should be logged into the system (i.e, date, time, and ID) when they enter the facility. They may or may not have appointments. Then, some means of recording and entering infor- mation into the computer system must be provided for each of the following: station visited, medical contact person, type of contact (i.e., consultation, treatment, follow-up check, routine checkup, emer- gency, etc.), length of contact, diagnosis, treatment, medicine prescribed (i.e., name, brand, amount, dosage), and follow-up advised (yes/no). All infor- mation must be available for query processing and all queries must be displayed either at terminals or on printers.