If you look at the major changes in you organization, you can trace it back to something dramatic that caused you to improve the way you were doing things. It was not a moment of inspiration by a CEO that said, “Aha!” It was more than likely the result of financial loss, compliance issue, government mandate, merger or acquisition, medical error, or a major reorganization.
Hospitals have become accustomed to keeping the workflow static unless something dramatic happens. It has become part of our culture. So what does it take to change? When revenue is up, lag days are down and we can promise the physicians an EMR in their lifetime…Why go through the pain and suffering of change?
Now that budgets are back to including travel and conference funding we will get a chance to talk to our industry peers. They will ask what we are doing to align our corporate IT strategy with this rapid emergence of personal technology. That’s when you swallow hard and say, “Ahum, we are planning on installing an EMR soon.”
Technology professionals should not live in the board room. They should live in the marketplace, understanding what direction technology is taking and positioning the organization to capitalize on it. Our customers are driving to the clinic, listening to internet radio on their car system streamed through their phone. They check their bank account in the waiting room and they have a print out about their condition from their home computer which has a secured wi-fi connection. So why do we consider HIT systems any different? I used an electronic boarding pass the other day by having a bar code on my iPhone web browser, scanning it at the TSA counter and airline check-in desk. TSA and the airlines are moving at the speed of personal computing.
We have not heard of a single EHR vendor with an iPhone Patient Portal. Why? Because we think our customers are not ready for it. We still view telecom and IT as separate services and business units. Bio-medical devices are clinical tools, but the technicians are not woven into the IT infrastructure to capitalize on the information that can populate our clinical systems. But then again, lag days are down and revenue is up...it’s all good!
