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How not to do IT implementation
What’s that old adage about learning more from failure than success?
Whatever its exact wording, providers gearing up for an IT implementation may want to heed it and read this recent article about the woes of Girard Medical Center, in rural Kansas. According to the piece, Girard “wanted an electronic medical record system to better share information with its clinic offshoots and to claim federal incentives. But a year-and-a-half and more than a million dollars later, the hospital says it’s no closer to having electronic medical records, and is blaming its vendor for the failure of the project.”
On one level, the article describes the legal wrangling currently underway between Girard and Cerner Corporation, the vendor with which it had contracted for the project. But Girard officials are also being frank about their missteps, and that’s the part providers may want to consider.
For example, the article quotes Holly Koch, Girard’s CFO, as complaining that “’We just kept running into things that weren’t included,’ in the original $2.9 million price tag the hospital initially agreed to pay. . . They weren’t holding up their end of the bargain.”
But she and her colleagues “also acknowledge that neither they nor the board had a complete understanding of the contract on which they signed off.
“’It was incredibly complex and difficult to understand,’ Koch said. ‘We relied on them to explain to us what the contract represented.’”
Lesson One: Caveat emptor, so make sure you know what you’re getting from any IT contractor.
Of course, however unfortunate for Girard, to a certain extent their missteps are understandable. As the article puts it, “While hospitals are eager to pick up some of the $19 billion in funds the Obama Administration made available in 2009 as part of the stimulus package, they often lack the in-house expertise to contract with and supervise vendors on the complex implementation of records systems.”
And their eagerness, of course, leads them to cut corners.
Which leads to Lesson Two: “When Girard hired Cerner, the hospital had just two IT staff members – neither with a specialty in electronic medical records, said Koch.”
Since then, however, they’ve “brought in an outside ‘vendor neutral’ consulting firm to help the hospital make an unbiased decision on what’s next for the hospital’s EMR program.”
In other words, if you don’t know what you’re talking about, finding someone who does.
Photo courtesy of purpleapple428 via Creative Commons
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