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Customer Experience and Design

Your Attitude is Showing: Inhibiting Health IT Progress

Last year, I was leading a SharePoint strategy session with a client. During one of the meetings the Chief of Staff, a visionary and highly regarded physician, asked the Director of IT if they could setup a website where they could post the next year’s physician contracts. Each physician could sign on, read the contracts, and post comments. They wanted for each to see comments offered from other physicians to encourage collaboration and increase the idea count.

This is something natively supported by SharePoint. The essential framework could be built in less than a day. The health system had installed SharePoint to manage a massive EMR rollout. The system was deemed capable of supporting nearly 10,000 concurrent users. The existing load was less than 200. In other words, IT had the infrastructure, the means, and the tools to give the top Doc exactly what he needed.

This same IT team had several black eyes with their physicians caused by outages and lack of support over the past year. They were deemed unresponsive by marketing. Almost every business user in the health system was desperately trying to figure out how to get things done without involving IT because it would not be done or it would be done wrong or take too long.

As a consultant, I suggested they let someone spend an hour with the Chief, build the solution, then work with him to work out the kinks. The whole thing would require no more than 8-16 hours over 8 weeks. All in all, this was extremely low flying fruit. After several attempts on my part to sell this, I was shut down. The physician didn’t know he was close to an elegant solution and eventually engaged an externally hosted solution for this scenario.

This is NOT a technology problem. This is a staffing problem. The problem, as I saw it, was the staff had the wrong attitude. They were willing to let their customers (aka business users) go outside rather than risk getting it wrong. They masked their insecurity and resource shortage with arrogance and avoidance. They missed a great opportunity to make the physician who runs the whole health system their ally. They refused to listen.

I realize there are probably dozens of scenarios in the past where they tried and got shot down for it. No organization gets this uptight with a lot of beating over time. Their reasons for past failures or shortcomings are very legitimate and real. This is not a black and white business decision. Based on details I don’t know, this could be the right decision. Yet I don’t think so.

I know another IT department who has taken steps to retrain their staff to put the customer (Physician, Patient, Nurse, Janitor) at the top of the list. They have realized the cost to train these customers to be more self-sufficient as well as providing infrastructure and tools that enable them to do more on their own has a much higher return on investment over the long run. These are the health systems that are making a difference. These are the health systems that are beating the odds.

The entire healthcare industry is getting pushed towards a more customer-centric mindset. Population health, ACOs, and even Quality measures programs are putting more emphasis on better informed patients. Achieving this requires everyone up the chain to think differently about how they interact with their customers (patients). Customers are no longer passive and those who get this are making a huge difference.

Imagine an enterprise where the IT organization goes out of their way to make their customers succeed. The net result is more creative users who are more tolerant of downtime and delays. They realize IT has to prioritize so they work with them, rather than tossing grenades.

It has to start somewhere. Why not with you?

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Mike Jenkins

Mike Jenkins has over 25 years of experience architecting, developing, and implementing solutions for organizations in the US, Canada, Europe, and Asia. Mike is experienced in healthcare, finance, defense, manufacturing, training, and retail industries. Some of Mike’s healthcare projects include: developing a core measures proactive monitoring system; developing an eHealth strategy for a growing community hospital; implementing transparent pricing and outcomes measurement solutions; automating clinical and administrative tasks through forms automation; connecting multiple healthcare systems through a common patient portal; and developing an electronic medical record application. He designed the Physician’s Portal and Secure Messaging Product for one of the top-five vendors in clinical information systems. His application development experience includes Amalga, CPOE, Clinical Portals, Patient Portals, Secure Messaging, HIM, Interoperability, and NEDSS for State level health departments. He is a Project Management Professional (PMP), a Certified Rational Consultant (RMUC), a LEAN Black Belt, and a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS). He is fluent in most methodologies and teaches the PMP Certification course in Atlanta.

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