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With the birth of HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) in 1996, hospitals, insurance companies, and private clinics have made a push to digitize all Health/Medical Records, ensuring consistency and privacy of records from one server to the next. The success rate of these initiatives has been all but stellar due to the lack of management experience with such projects. The ordinary IT Project Management Office (PMO) is not capable of handling the amount of issues, logs, and change requests that are involved with the restructuring of a 1,000 bed hospital data center, let alone migrating old paper files to the new system with the security and accuracy that is imperative when lives are at stake. When the proverbial IT avalanche breaks loose, the ensuing project derailment can be disasterous.

Avoiding an IT Avalanche

The most important goal for any PMO is to develop a method that makes communication between the team members as easy as possible, thereby eliminating a painstaking issue log process that inhibits the integrity of the project itself. When the team is able to discover the avalanche before it breaks, warnings can be communicated well before an impasse. This allows problems to be tackled individually rather than dealing with the destruction at the bottom of the mountain - the inevitable result of poor project management.

The most structured and organized PMO will always get the best results, but the structure and manpower in this group is the key to success. The PMO should be thought of as a damage prevention center, rather than damage recovery center.

Disciplined Project Management to the Rescue

The advancement of medical records management systems is possible only through a structured project plan, including:

Current State Analysis

• Project Scope - The methods by which the implementation will occur
• Project Boundaries - Limitations for the zealous project team

Scope Change Management

• Issue Log - Problems with the implementation
• Work Plan - Planned solutions for the issues

Go-Live Stratagem

• Training Methods - Without the knowledge, the workers cannot perform
• Phase-in Functionality - All systems GO!

It is the Project Manager’s duty to assign tasks to the individuals capable of resolving issues in a steady and reliable fashion, and then confirm the completion of the work, both in log form and with a supervisory follow-up. A project’s life, like the patient’s life, lies in the ability to communicate effectively between the assigned professionals. With successful project management comes successful patient management.

Tags: Electronic Medical Records (EMR), HIPAA, PMO

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