Helping Healthcare Leaders:

  • Accelerate Technology Adoption

    • Overcome Resistance to Change

      • Qualify for Maximum Meaningful Use Incentives

As a healthcare leader today, you face an ever-increasing number of regulatory requirements. At the same time, you are under constant pressure to achieve clinical, financial and operational objectives. Now, on top of all of that, you are expected to meet looming deadlines for Meaningful Use incentive payments.

You know that the answer to achieving your performance objectives — while simultaneously meeting regulatory requirements and qualifying for maximum Meaningful Use dollars — lies in effectively utilizing advanced health information technology.

But there is a catch…

Simply acquiring even the best technology available won’t get you where you need to go. In fact, the introduction of any new technology can easily put your organization’s performance and productivity at risk. To get the results you want, what you need is adoption and effective utilization of the technology by providers and staff throughout your organization, network, or healthcare system.

Like many other healthcare leaders, you may have already found that these are the hardest pieces of the IT puzzle to put into place.

The Unique Challenges of IT Adoption in Healthcare

It is now widely accepted that in order to get the best possible return on any major technology investment, you need effective Change Management.

Why?

Because, while the technology may make it possible for you to get the results you want, it won’t get the job done by itself. You also need people to make necessary changes in how they do their work, so that the potential of the technology can be realized. This requires Change Management.

When done effectively, Change Management not only redesigns workflows to maximize the benefits your organization gets from the new technology, it also “redesigns” employee attitudes and behaviors.

Employees develop the commitment they need to not only learn the basics of how to use the technology, but to develop real proficiency with it.

Employees and teams also learn how to collaborate effectively, so that your organization can achieve goals more rapidly, with less chance of cost overruns, productivity slowdowns and errors during the transition.

Since 1995, when Dr. John Kotter’s article Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail was published in the Harvard Business Review, Change Management has emerged as a structured discipline, with its own set of processes, tools and methodologies. However, the application of Change Management methodologies to IT adoption in healthcare is complicated by the unique challenges of a healthcare organization. These challenges include:

  • Unique Role of Physicians: In healthcare organizations of all sizes, physicians function (or are perceived) as leaders, yet they are also front-line workers. Your Change Management strategy must be tailored to the specific roles of physicians in your organization. It must guide physicians through a successful transition, without damaging their position as leaders or jeopardizing their productivity. This step is critical. Make an error here, and you are likely to evoke a passive resistance to the change that will be very difficult to overcome.
  • No Margin for Error: Patient safety is on the line each day, so there is virtually no margin for error. Changes to existing policies and protocols must be done with great care and active collaboration from all stakeholders to safeguard against clinical errors that can easily become catastrophic.
  • Extraordinary Time Constraints: Hospitals and physician practices have far less flexibility than other organizations in adjusting their operations to accommodate the planning and implementation of major change initiatives. For example, while stakeholder input into the planning process is critical for successful Change Management, patient care cannot simply be suspended while providers and staff analyze new technologies or evaluate workflow adjustments. In addition, traditional skills assessment and training approaches can easily lead to major productivity losses, causing them to be quickly rejected by physicians who are under constant pressure to maintain and even increase their patient productivity.
  • Complex Structures: Most healthcare facilities and systems have complex organizational and procedural structures. Checks and balances are critical to ensure that changes made in one area of the system, facility or practice do not negatively impact the workflow and continuity of care in other areas.

Accelerate IT Adoption Through Effective Change Management

NeoVista Health provides Change Management tools, methodologies and actionable strategies designed specifically for IT adoption in health care. These resources provide healthcare leaders with the means to more effectively lead change and achieve a greater, faster return on technology investments.