| Course | NR 706 Healthcare Informatics & Information Systems |
|---|---|
| Week | 4 |
| Paper type | Cost of ownership brief |
| Length | About 1,100 words, 5 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Chamberlain University |
| Program | MSN, Nursing Informatics |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for NR 706 Week 4
Cost of Ownership Brief: Five Years of a Standalone Clinical Communication Platform, Line by Line, With the Basis for Every Figure and a Sensitivity Check
Student Name
College of Nursing, Chamberlain University
NR 706: Healthcare Informatics & Information Systems
Instructor Name
Month Day, Year
Cost of Ownership Brief: Five Years of a Standalone Clinical Communication Platform, Line by Line, With the Basis for Every Figure and a Sensitivity Check
Scope
Option C from the selection analysis: a standalone clinical communication platform for about 5,200 users across three hospitals, with alert routing and electronic record integration, over five fiscal years from go-live. All figures are estimates in 2027 dollars, with the basis stated beside each. They are planning figures for a decision, not quotes.
The Table
| Line | Year 1 | Years 2 to 5 | Five-year total | Basis |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Platform subscription | 561,600 | 1,123,200 in years 2 and 3; 1,179,360 in years 4 and 5 | 2,864,160 | Vendor's budgetary figure of $9 per user per month for 5,200 users; 5% increase assumed at renewal in year 4 |
| Shared smartphones | 1,105,000 | 353,600 for loss and breakage; 1,105,000 replacement in year 4 | 2,563,600 | 1,700 devices at $650; 8% annual loss rate; replacement after three years |
| Device management licenses | 102,000 | 408,000 | 510,000 | $5 per device per month |
| Cases and chargers | 85,000 | 85,000 in year 4 | 170,000 | Infrastructure team's estimate, replaced with devices |
| Wi-Fi remediation | 420,000 | 0 | 420,000 | Wi-Fi survey found coverage gaps in stairwells, basements and two older wings |
| Middleware and interfaces | 180,000 | 144,000 | 324,000 | Interface build and annual support |
| Internal analyst labor | 220,000 | 440,000 | 660,000 | Two analysts in year 1, one ongoing, at $110,000 loaded cost each |
| Training backfill | 301,600 | 90,480 | 392,080 | 2,600 nurses at 2 hours and $58 an hour in year 1; 15% annual turnover thereafter at 1 hour |
| Go-live support at the elbow | 96,000 | 0 | 96,000 | Contracted support for three weeks across three hospitals |
| Help desk increase | 35,000 | 140,000 | 175,000 | Half a full-time position at $70,000 |
| Exit and data export | 0 | 60,000 in year 5 | 60,000 | Estimated cost to export message records and transition at contract end |
| Total | 8,234,840 |
Internal Labor, the Line Most Often Missing
Vendor proposals list subscriptions and devices. They do not list the analysts the system must supply to build routing rules, maintain interfaces and handle releases, or the nurses' paid time away from patients for training. Those two lines together are about $1.05 million over five years, more than an eighth of the total.
Spread Across the Years
Year 1 carries the capital: devices, cases, Wi-Fi and middleware, about $1.79 million, plus about $1.32 million in operating costs. Years 2 and 3 settle at about $0.95 million a year. Year 4 spikes again with device replacement and the renewal increase. A one-year view would understate the commitment by about $5 million.
Counting the End as Well as the Start
At the end of the contract, message records must be exported in a usable format for legal retention, and either the platform renewed or replaced. The $60,000 exit line is small but signals that leaving has a cost, which the contract should limit.
What a Reader Should Watch
The two lines most likely to change are the subscription, until a contract price replaces the budgetary quote, and Wi-Fi remediation, until the summer work is bid. The brief will be updated when either changes, with the date and the reason recorded beside the line, and the business case will carry the latest figures. A difference of more than 10% in either line would be reported to the steering committee before signing.
What Is Not Counted as a Saving
The current pager contract, about $96,000 a year, and the physician texting license, about $120,000 a year, would end, saving about $1.08 million over five years. They are shown here as offsets, not subtracted from the total, so that the board sees the full cost and the savings separately. Released clinical time is not counted as money at all, since it does not leave the budget; it appears in the business case as a benefit to care, measured in response times.
Sensitivity
Some figures are more uncertain than others, and the brief tests the three most likely to be wrong. Device loss at 15% a year instead of 8% adds about $310,000. A 12% renewal increase instead of 5% adds about $79,000. Wi-Fi remediation at the high end of the survey's range adds about $180,000. Together, the pessimistic case is about $8.8 million, a difference of about 7% from the central estimate; an optimistic case with half the loss rate and no renewal increase is about $8.0 million.
How the Figures Were Gathered
The subscription figure came from the vendor's budgetary quote, which is not a contract price. Device prices came from the system's current purchasing agreement. The Wi-Fi figure came from the infrastructure team's survey of all three hospitals in November 2026. Labor costs used human resources' loaded rates for analysts. Training backfill used the average hourly rate for registered nurses across the system. Each source is named so that finance can check or update it.
How This Compares With the Alternatives
The current arrangement costs about $1.1 million over five years in contracts, but its costs in clinicians' time are not on any invoice. The record vendor's chat module, with separate alarm middleware, was estimated at about $7.6 million over five years, cheaper mainly because it needs fewer new licenses. The difference between the two platform options, about $0.6 million, is the price of having alarms and messages in one app.
What Finance Asked
The vice president of finance reviewed the draft and asked for the year-4 spike to be shown clearly, since a board that approves year 1 may not expect a device replacement three years later. The table now shows it. Finance also asked whether devices could be leased; leasing was priced at about the same total but would move devices from capital to operating, which the business case discusses.
What the Brief Does Not Price
Patient safety benefits, nurse time, or the cost of an adverse event linked to a missed alarm. Each is real and none can be priced honestly from available data. Evidence suggests communication technology changes how clinicians work in ways that are partly hard to predict (Wu et al., 2011; Ash et al., 2004), which is why the brief prices what it can and names what it cannot. A small randomized trial found secure messaging improved physicians' perceived communication efficiency over paging (Przybylo et al., 2014), but perceived efficiency is not a dollar figure and the brief does not treat it as one.
References
Ash, J. S., Berg, M., & Coiera, E. (2004). Some unintended consequences of information technology in health care: The nature of patient care information system-related errors. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 11(2), 104-112. https://doi.org/10.1197/jamia.M1471
Przybylo, J. A., Wang, A., Loftus, P., Evans, K. H., Chu, I., & Shieh, L. (2014). Smarter hospital communication: Secure smartphone text messaging improves provider satisfaction and perception of efficacy, workflow. Journal of Hospital Medicine, 9(9), 573-578. https://doi.org/10.1002/jhm.2228
Wu, R., Rossos, P., Quan, S., Reeves, S., Lo, V., Wong, B., Cheung, M., & Morra, D. (2011). An evaluation of the use of smartphones to communicate between clinicians: A mixed-methods study. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 13(3), e59. https://doi.org/10.2196/jmir.1655
The Chamberlain NR 706 Week 4 instructions
Make the brief mostly a table. Give the purchase price one line and spend the rest of the page on what recurs: subscriptions, hosting, interface maintenance, the analyst and build hours the organization supplies itself, backfill during training, support at go-live and support demand that never returns to its starting level. State the basis for every figure so a reader can check it. Spread costs across the years rather than reporting year 1 alone. Count the cost of leaving at the end. Show savings as offsets rather than subtracting them silently. Test the most uncertain figures in a sensitivity section, and say what the brief does not price. Compare your total with the alternatives.
How the NR 706 Week 4 example is put together
The sample's table totals $8,234,840 over five years: subscription $2.86 million with a renewal increase, devices $2.56 million including loss and a year-4 replacement, device management, cases, Wi-Fi remediation of $420,000, middleware, two then one analysts, training backfill for 2,600 nurses, three weeks of go-live support, a help desk increase and $60,000 to exit. Internal labor and training together are about $1.05 million. Year 1 carries about $1.79 million in capital. Retired pager and texting contracts, about $1.08 million, are shown as offsets. Sensitivity runs from about $8.0 million to $8.8 million, and finance's review is recorded. Leasing devices is noted as moving about $1.1 million from capital to operating at a similar total, and the brief records how each figure was gathered.
Where the points sit in the NR 706 Week 4 rubric
Cost briefs lose most when they report the vendor's quote as the cost, leaving out the organization's own labor and training time. Next is a brief that shows year 1 only, hiding device replacement and renewal increases in later years. Figures without a stated basis cannot be checked or updated. Savings are often subtracted from costs silently, which makes the commitment look smaller than it is. Exit costs at the end of the contract are almost always missing. Briefs that give a single figure with false precision, and no sensitivity, invite distrust when the first figure changes. Briefs that never compare their total with the alternatives also leave the reader without context. Few record who reviewed the figures.
NR 706 Week 4 help: mistakes that cost points
Building a total cost of ownership means finding costs that never appear on a vendor's quote. Line by line, we can set out recurring costs, add internal labor and training, state the basis for each figure and spread them across the years. We can also help you show savings as offsets and test the most uncertain figures. Asking finance to review the draft before you submit usually adds a line you had missed. The figures and the brief are yours. Comparing your total with the alternatives is worth doing too.
Get a NR 706 Week 4 example written to your instructions
Send the prompt, the rubric and any figures your section supplied, and a custom NR 706 Week 4 brief comes back inside 24-48h with the first one free. Keep your employer's contracted pricing and vendor quotations out of what you send us; those belong to the organization that negotiated them, and a public example does not need them.
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NR 706 Week 4 questions, answered
Where do the numbers come from if I have no quotations?
Published sources carry a brief adequately: government and trade reporting on implementation costs, peer-reviewed studies of comparable organizations, published contract awards, and salary tables covering the internal roles. Label every figure with its origin. A brief built on cited public evidence and stated assumptions marks better than one built on unattributed numbers that look authoritative and cannot be checked.
How many years should the total cover?
Match the commitment. Where the case assumes an agreement of a stated length, run the arithmetic to the end of it, and where nothing is specified, five years is a defensible frame because it captures one renewal. Say which frame you chose and why in the opening, since a total without a stated horizon compares with nothing.
Does the brief recommend anything?
Usually not, or only lightly. A cost brief establishes the size of the commitment so that a later document can argue for it, and mixing the two weakens both. Where the week does ask for a conclusion, keep it to what the figures support, such as which option carries the lower total or which assumption most deserves testing first.
Where can I find a free NR 706 Week 4 sample paper?
The complete five-year cost of ownership brief for a clinical communication platform appears in full here.
Which costs does the NR 706 Week 4 brief say are most often missing?
The organization's own analyst labor and nurses' paid training time, together about $1.05 million over five years.