HIT Exchange

HITEXCHANGEMEDIA.COM EHRPITFAL In by CHRISTINA THIELST November 2009, the topic "Top Ten reasons Why EMR/EHR Implementations are Failing" was raised on the HIMSS LinkedIn discus- sion group. More than two years later, the group's technology and healthcare profes- sionals continue debating the causes of such pitfalls and relating their experiences. "There are so many factors impacting the successful implementation… ranging from lack of competent project manage- ment, inability to obtain the buy-in needed by all disciplines, insufficient training, and so on," says Larry Carver, a healthcare IT consultant. Carver believes most facilities lack the internal resources to do anything other than maintain the current systems. "When projects arise, they opt to con- tract a consulting company to implement, relying on knowledge transfer to staff, who may or may not be involved in the imple- mentation at an appropriate level with the optimal amount of focus on the new tech- nology, process or functionality," Carver says. Even after the technology is imple- mented, there are ongoing management issues, upgrades, new interfaces, etc. Karl Walter Keirstead, managing direc- tor at Civerex Systems, offers that "cus- tomization is not any more complex than the workflow you are trying to build, (but) if the stakeholders don't understand their own workflows, they won't be able to build them or use them." Keirstead attempts to simplify the solu- tion by advising IT teams to "map out your 'as-is' then you get the staff involved and transition this to the 'should be' to create the best practice. Then it comes down to human/machine resource allocation." That speaks to the process of manag- ing change, but healthcare organizations are still left with the issue of resistance. Keirstead also offers that other industries don't have the same challenges because they have adopted standard protocols. "There are too many ideas about how healthcare should be delivered, so how does unstructured medicine fit into a structured environment?" Mark Batson, director of business development for MBM eHealthcare Solutions, states that IT industry profes- sionals who focus on system implementa- tion know that "75 percent of IT system implementations in any industry fail due to lack of adherence to proper system implementation techniques." Because healthcare processes involve a lot of people with diverse responsibilities and many machines with a wide range of technical specifications, Batson emphasizes the need for "proper system implementa- tion techniques at each intersecting point of healthcare service delivery" in order for it to operate and produce relevant data. Describing system implementation as "an art, more so than a science," Batson says it is important to pair "the functional aspects EHR and EMR implementations are complex, varied and enormously challenging. When they fail, it's frequently humans—and not technology—to blame. 75% of IT system implementations in any industry fail due to lack of adherence to proper system implementation techniques. JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2012 HIT EXCHANGE Healthcare Business + Technology | 38 S L

• Cover