It’s not about the technology

Digital Health is a new buzz word that really means the convergence of people, processes, technology, and data (PPTD) to improve how patient care is delivered and received, and refinements in operations. It is nothing new, in fact, it has been going on for some time, it has just become more prevalent with care providers as the technology and integration brings out new ways of doing things.

Over the past 10 years, there has been a rapid increase in digital health as fully integrated electronic medical/health records have emerged. This has created an enormous amount of change and disruption on the people side of Digital Health. Changing years of paper charting and verbal or written ordering habits to the use of technology and data is causing a tremendous amount of pain and frustration to the care delivery model. I’m not saying its bad, but it isn’t without its failures.

We have to get it right: It seems so simple

Problem:

A digital transformation isn’t a technology transformation, it’s really the convergence of PPTD that is transformational, and how all four work together in new ways. The approach of instituting new technologies to replace old ways to work, to automate/improve the way care is delivered, and data captured more discretely and comprehensively, is failing at execution. According to Healthcare IT News and Insight Enterprises, we get a sense of the problems which have arisen from this convergence.

5 POINTS OF DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION FAILURE

Insight Enterprises, for its part, said having a roadmap is a key to success, and the new study pinpointed five causes for failure in that category:

1. 15 percent of organizations wanted to make a transformation, but hadn’t even begun discussing it

2. 62 percent failed to document and communicate the IT transformation plan across the organization

3. 39 percent failed to create the culture of change (through documentation and communication) required for success

4. 18 percent communicated their vision but failed to document it, leaving them with no blueprint for implementation

5. 5 percent had neither documented nor communicated their road map

Commissioned by Insight Enterprises, Inc

Bottom Line

A lack of leading, communication and fundamental change management are the major reasons healthcare is struggling or failing. We aren’t good at people changes. Why? Cultural transformation is huge. The “How we behave” to achieve outcomes is being left out.

No plan documented? We spending millions of dollars on these technologies an there is no plan, 62% don’t have one. We are doing this to ourselves.

We better learn

What has been increasingly emerging over the last several years is the notion of Population Health Management and Value-Based Care. With the type of technology now in place, it enables healthcare organizations to make vast strides forward. However, if we haven’t learned from this last craze, we need to put more attention on the people changes and leading sustainable transformation. Getting back to the basics of what makes great leaders great. There needs to be leadership, communication, planning, and human management, or this cycle we are in the midst of will repeat itself.

Jason Ewing

208.880.1636

jewing@dewingit.net

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