osoz world
Achieving Digital Health Maturity Healthcare technologies have significantly improved in recent years. However, the success or failure of digitization is mainly determined by change management rather than by technology. It’s a mixture or the right solution, well-designed processes, strong digital culture, and employee engagement. Here are some core guidelines. Regardless of whether it is new functionality for creating electronic medical records, a clinical decision support system, or a completely new integrated IT system, the medical facility manager is responsible for its implementation. And the final result, success or failure depends on their ability to manage change, personnel and, above all, projects. Healthcare managers do not always have the knowledge and competence to carry out large investments in IT. This is because the process is very different than all standard operations performed in a hospital. The staff has to learn how to use any new medical equipment purchased to begin working with it. The digitization is an undertaking that has practically no specified end, requiring continuous development, interfering with the employees’ way of work, procedures, and habits. It can become a best-case or a carefully hidden organizational failure.
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OSOZ Polska 5/2020
Finding fish bones There are many answers to the question of what should the first essential step in any IT project be. Some say it is necessary to start by identifying needs and comparing IT vendors’ offers. Others claim that design should be first. However, two elements may be crucial before a decision is made at all: identification of problems to be solved and analysis of readiness to change. One of the principles of digitization is that imposing an IT system on old, inefficient processes leads to the same inefficient processes and means that a lot of money has been spent. As a result, healthcare facility does not gain much. Digitization does not boil down to changing paper into a computer, but to improving processes, rebuilding work organization, or collecting data via new tools. A reasonably classic mistake at this stage is analyzing the bottlenecks in a hospital or clinic from the manager’s perspective, from above, noticing the whole,
but not seeing the minor congestion camouflaged at the lowest organizational levels and in the smallest processes of patient service. An even worse case is the presumption that employees do not know much about computerization or their attitudes are negative, so why bother asking them. The management often does not know about processes in the doctor’s office, at the reception desk, or in the emergency room. Recognizing them is sometimes a big challenge. A useful technique could be an anonymous survey or, even better, case scenarios to be completed by staff. A patient talking to the doctors while they are looking at the computer – dialogs completed by the team sometimes reveal deeply hidden problems, while unmasking what employees really think. Just asking doctors, nurses, or a front desk receptionist for an opinion is the beginning of cooperation and trust-building. And it’s a critical element of any change.
