Paragon Consulting Partners

Healthcare IT Solutions and Results

Laurie Lafleur

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Establishing a well-represented and empowered governance committee up-front is critical to the success of any Enterprise Imaging project. By providing a sense of direction, fostering collaboration, and monitoring project progress the governance committee ensures each Enterprise Imaging initiative addresses the organization’s top needs and priorities, on time and within budget.

You might be wondering ‘how do we establish good governance?’. Read the following 6 best practices for establishing a strong governance foundation, to ensure your next enterprise imaging venture starts off on the right foot, or check out our animated video on YouTube.

1. Take a left turn at Albuquerque

Good governance provides a sense of direction by setting and communicating the vision to ensure continued alignment across all initiatives. This helps to avoid distractions and provides a clear set of guidelines when assessing scope and priorities. It is important to engage leadership across stakeholder groups and specialties, such as physicians and other clinical roles, as well as IT, Operations, and Finance

2. One bite at a time

Next, determine priorities – what is burning, and what can wait? Identify which departments, workflows, and systems will have the biggest impact on quality of care and business priorities. As well, identify any other peripheral departments and ‘ologies that should be considered. Determining chronology is a very political exercise and must be careful considered, as factors such as referral revenue, tenure, and highly marketed specialties carry additional influence.

3. Put your heads together

Be sure to include representation and buy-in from key stakeholders across the organization, including business, technical, and clinical function to ensure a complete and successful project. Avoid missed requirements that could disrupt both timelines and budget, minimize conflict by fostering collaboration and engagement, and determine standards early and enforce what data qualifies to be enfolded into the data platform.

4. Measure twice, cut once

Set clear and measurable success criteria and monitor progress. Agree up front on what success looks like, and hold stakeholders accountable for milestone delivery. It is important not to miss your milestones unless a critical event has occurred, losing trust is a very difficult road to rebuild.

5. Expect the unexpected

Even the best laid plans sometimes go awry; a good governance model ensures there are mechanisms in place to address unforeseen obstacles and shifting priorities. The Governance team MUST be engaged and active throughout the Enterprise Imaging lifecycle as things change.

6. Lift the blindfold

Establish clear and consistent communication between governance committee, project teams, and affected stakeholders to provide transparency into project objectives and progress. This helps to keep everyone on the same page – both within and outside the core governance team. As well, it helps everyone in the organization to feel included and important, and avoids feelings of uncertainty and frustration when such transparency is not provided. Communication to stakeholders should include strategy, progress, scope changes with efficacious feedback loop mechanisms.

Following these best practices will help to ensure your next Enterprise Imaging initiative is setup for success, and will ultimately lead to a smoother project roll-outs and easier change management.

Contact us to learn more about how we can help your organization tackle its next Enterprise Imaging initiative, including establishing governance and strategy, workflow analysis and requirements definition, vendor selection and RFP, deployment and project management, and beyond. If you enjoyed this post subscribe to our blog to be notified when we post new articles.

 

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A few years ago we signed up for what promised to be an exciting adventure: Extreme Fitness Vacation in the Grand Canyon: Hike from the Rim to the River and Back in One Day! Sounds fun, right? If you think so, or if you’re just curious what this has to do with project management, read on!

This excursion was led by a gym owner, manager, personal trainer, and beefcake in his own right. The trip was seemingly well planned; our routes were outlined and our host promised to take care of all the incidentals – including a relaxing lunch at the bottom of the canyon before beginning the arduous hike back up. What could possibly go wrong? Unfortunately, lots.

To start, it turns out this particular hike (or at least the upwards part of the journey) is actually noted to be one of the 10 most dangerous hikes in North America – not for the faint of heart, and certainly not for the faint-of-fitness. This little tidbit was not known to our excursion leader, who himself was somewhat of a hiking newb, and thus there were no clear fitness or hiking experience guidelines or requirements laid out for those who were interested in signing up. All that was required, as it turned out, was the ability to pay the less-than-modest fee. This resulted in a rag-tag group of pleasant, yet ill-equipped and ill-informed individuals joining the excursion.

The temperature in the Canyon at that time of year (June) often exceeds 110F (or 43C for my Canadian friends), which means a few things: first, you’ll need lots of water and electrolytes (critical to muscle function) because you’re going to sweat. A lot. Second, you won’t feel hungry during the hike, but trust me, your body will be. This means you need to bring lots of light snacks to eat along the way – even when the last thing you feel like doing is eating – to ensure your energy levels are maintained to support your level of physical exertion.

To make a long story short, because of his lack of experience and knowledge of the physical and environmental demands of a Grand Canyon hike, our host made a few critical errors:

  1. He did not bring adequate or appropriate snacks for the number of people in his group (seriously ‘Arnold’s extreme protein muscle fuel bars’ are really the last thing you want to be trying to digest under these conditions)
  2. He assumed there was water along the trail – which would have been great because it meant we wouldn’t have to carry it ourselves! However, water was only available halfway up the return trail, so for 75% of the hike there were no viable re-fill options for empty bottles and thus many among us ran out of water…quickly.
  3. He failed to provide or educate participants on the importance of electrolytes, which are lost with sweat and must be replenished to ensure your leg muscles function well and long enough to haul your butt out of the canyon (as many-a-sign said, down is optional – up is mandatory)
  4. Lunch was promised at the bottom of the canyon, but he didn’t pack anything as he expected he could purchase sandwiches at a river side cafe. The problem? There was no such cafe, and nowhere to purchase sandwiches (unless you want to travel another mile or so off-route to the famed Phantom Ranch, and you’ve booked ahead…)

The result? Heat exhaustion, severe muscle cramping, and even delirium were experienced by some. I’m happy to report we all made it back out without serious injuries – no thanks to our leader, who himself could barely walk due to leg cramps near the end.

So what does hiking the Grand Canyon and Healthcare IT project management have in common? Simple. In this example our fearless (to a fault) leader acted as the project manager. He defined the scope of the excursion, the paths we would take, and the schedule we would adhere to. He was an expert in health and fitness, so the participants trusted his judgement and his plan – and thus followed him on what turned out to be a dangerous and misguided adventure. What he wasn’t, however, was an expert on the specific challenges presented by a Grand Canyon hike and therefore was ill-equipped to identify and navigate the unique terrain and conditions the group encountered.

Proving that even the best laid plans go awry, this (albeit extreme) story provides the perfect parallel for healthcare IT project management. Certified project management professionals (PMPs) are intimately aware of all associated best practices and methodologies required to steer general project initiative and are an important part of any project team. However, unless they also have the subject matter expertise that comes from hands-on experience in clinical and technical healthcare settings they are not equipped with the knowledge or tools needed to craft the most efficient and effective plan or steer the project flawlessly to success.

In addition to knowing how to run a project a PMP who is also a true subject matter expert brings immeasurable added value by additionally understanding the needs of clinical stakeholders, how data flows and systems interact, and knowing what pitfalls may lie ahead – thus allowing them to take proactive steps to help ensure their healthcare IT projects run smoothly, and are delivered on time and within budget.

For more information on our health IT project management methodology download the Six Steps For Effective Health IT Project Management Infographic.

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‘Enterprise imaging’ is one of the most popular topics within healthcare IT circles today, and it’s no surprise why as within these two simple words lies a lot of potential. Enterprise imaging promises to tear down the silos that traditionally existed between disparate healthcare providers, departments, and facilities. It promises to create a truly unified patient record that is centrally managed and accessible by care providers and patients alike, in real-time. And, it promises to do all this while reducing costs and improving operational efficiency.

Such a state would finally allow patient records to be truly portable, enabling patients to assume ownership of their medical records and empowering them with the flexibility and freedom of choice to navigate the healthcare system with greater ease. As well, care providers would be equipped with critical insights into their patients’ medical conditions and history directly at the point-of-care, allowing them to make timely and informed decisions that ultimately lead to better clinical outcomes and preventative care initiatives.

So why then is Enterprise Imaging still a topic of discussion, and not yet a widely adopted reality?

While the vision is straightforward, the path there is considerably less-so. Every healthcare organization is different, every vendor is different, and it seems that most of the time there are more questions than answers. Should we go with a single vendor that offers a consolidated platform, or pursue a ‘best-of-breed’ strategy that allows us to pick and choose my favourite solutions? Should we update or replace our systems all at once, or take a more progressive approach that leverages our existing infrastructure? Should we host solutions ourselves, or consider a cloud-based and vendor-managed alternative?

Successfully deploying a centrally-managed enterprise platform that intelligently aggregates diverse imaging data from across the care continuum has broad implications and requires a carefully orchestrated approach to solution design that includes a thoughtful analysis of your current situation inline with your unique near and long-term goals.

Our Six Tenets of Enterprise Imaging provides a roadmap that can methodically guide you through the process of developing a complete Enterprise Imaging strategy that is tailored to your unique needs. While it may not provide all the answers up front, it breaks down the key components for success into manageable and actionable steps that consider your workflows, resources, and budget:

  1. Governance: ensures you have the people and processes in place to make informed and timely decisions
  2. Enterprise Platform: addresses the technologies required to build a scalable and performant foundation
  3. Workflow: enables efficient task orchestration and communication between providers and systems
  4. Visualization: delivers unencumbered access to images and tools to care providers across the care continuum
  5. Exchange: allows secure sharing of critical patient information with outside provider or payer networks
  6. Analytics: unlocks the clinical and business insights hidden across your enterprise

To see the big picture, download our infographic. To learn more about each tenet subscribe to our blog, where we will be discussing the key considerations and implications of each in turn.