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.