Setting Clinical IT Priorities

In my previous writing, I’ve suggested that the federal government co-opted our Clinical IT agenda over the past three years with Meaningful Use Stage 2, ICD-10, the HIPAA Omnibus Rule, and the Affordable Care Act (ACA).

Now that Stage 2 attestation is done, ICD-10 is on a trajectory for October go live, OCR/OIG/internal security audit activities are done for the moment, and the care management medical record we need to support the Affordable Care Act is live, we can once again ask our customers to help set priorities.

Here’s the process we’re following:

In June, we’re convening a group of senior VPs, clinicians, and IT professionals to jointly review the current HIMSS Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model (EMRAM) Stage 7 criteria and benchmark ourselves.   It’s likely that we’ll amend the HIMSS criteria in a few areas where BIDMC considers itself a market leader - patient family engagement, mobile technologies, big data analytics, and cloud adoption.     We’ll then identify gaps in functionality/workflow to focus our strategic goals for FY16.

Once we have identified the goals, we’ll ensure we have the right organizational structure and staffing to accomplish those goals.    We’ll verify the operating and capital budgets required.    We’ll create Gantt charts and resource leveling artifacts to illustrate the relationship among the scope of projects, timing, and resources.

These artifacts will be used in FY16 by all our clinical governance bodies.    As new projects are mandated by government, mergers/acquisitions, or changes in local requirements, additions will be weighed against the scope, timelines, and resources already allocated.

I expect FY16 to be  focused on the clinical documentation needed to support ICD-10, quality measurement, and care coordination.

It will be interesting to see what  projects bubble up to the top and  to identify the gaps between the ideal state of an academic medical center and our current state.

I’m hopeful that the process will have such transparency and inclusiveness that it will be an effective means to align supply and demand in FY16, increasing customer satisfaction by documenting the prioritized goals and communicating the progress we’re making.