Parkhill Hospital is one of the health centers I have been privileged to work with in my service to underserved communities in the U.S. Unlike other health centers around the country, Parkhill does not have some of the basic technologies such as the Electronic Health Records (EHR). As a result, the health center has struggled to maintain a steady flow of patients over the past months. The management knows that if they do not do implement the EHR to make the hospital a modern facility, they will soon run out of enough clients. After much brainstorming and deliberation, Parkhill has decided to introduce the EHR. The goal is to maintain a competitive advantage over other health centers in the region and make work for the patients and professionals easier. The organization will use Kotter’s eight steps model to bring about the needed change.
Establishing a Sense of Urgency
To establish a sense of urgency, the management team at Parkhill will hold a meeting with its staff members to discuss the current situation at the organization. The employees will be informed that they are on the verge of losing their jobs due to the reduction in the number of customers. In the meeting, it will be discussed that closing the facility due to the lack of modern technological facilities is the last thing they would want to do. The sense of urgency will help employees recognize their jobs are in jeopardy as well as the wellbeing of community members. They therefore, express their commitment to making the necessary changes to secure their longevity at the health organization.
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Create a Guiding Coalition
Now that a sense of urgency has been created, a guiding coalition will be established. This will consist of some employees, the manager, and the biller. The coalition will be in charge of identifying factors that can be restraining and that can facilitate the successful implementation of the EHR with minimal financial and operational disruptions. The members of the guiding coalition will be trained on how to use the EHR and train other employees.
Creating a Vision for Change
Parkhill as an organization must be aware of how it will present the needed change to the rest of its employees. The vision for change after the implementation of HER is that Parkhill will become leaner. The EHR is not an end goal but a means to an end for the organization. This vision connects with the long-term sustainability of the hospital. Furthermore, there is a relationship between the leanness and quality of service to the patients.
Communicate the Vision
This vision will be established by both the manager of Parkhill and the accountant. In the beginning, it will be communicated to the governor of the County of Georgia and the Medical Director in the county. The manager and the biller will then have one on one conversation with members of the Parkhill team. The theme that will be constant throughout is that it is not just represented as a project but a major shift in the culture of the organization. The immediate benefits of the Electronic Health Record will be dependent on the department of the organization. To the physicians, EHR will enhance diagnosis and monitoring which will sequentially improve patient care, decrease malpractice, and increase revenue due to increased patient inflow. The administrative staff, on the other hand, will be benefit by spending less time finding missed records, data entry, transparent billing, less time in data duplication, and the possibility of several people to work with the same patient’s chart concurrently.
Removal of Obstacles
Both the manager and the biller will ensure full participation of employees at Parkhill, involving even the most resistant members. The group that will be resisting change will be engaged in the process of implementing the EHR through approaches such as individual training, setting up of dummy patients to reveal how the system works, being involved in teamwork of watching training videos and running meaningful reports to reveal the performance of the and looking at what areas need improvement or changing. The manager and the biller also have to lay emphasis on the formal achievement of the milestones towards the achievement of the process of implementing EHR.
Create Short-term Wins
The timeline for the implementation of the EHR will begin on the 1 st of February, 2020 and end on 30 th April 2020. During these period short goals and milestones will be created to signal the progress towards the main objective. Examples of short term wins include maintaining a record of diabetic patients in the EHR by the end of February and having a record of medications that patients are allergic to on record. From a safety standpoint, this is important as it will improve the health care delivery of the patients. The short-term wins will prove that the vision created earlier on was accurate and that the change made was necessary.
Build on Change
Wins achieved by the change will be consolidated through management meetings. Every Tuesday, head of departments at Parkhill will meet to discuss and report meaningful use and achievement made by the EHR. Building on change will help the organization to focus not on just moving forward but also on achieving more challenging milestones.
In the initial stages of implementing the EHR, the system had been perceived as a method for increasing revenue by attracting more clients. To ensure that it is ingrained in the culture of the organization, two initiatives will be taken; provide more internal training to all stakeholders, and implementing functionality among patients. Also, the attitude of the resistant group should be checked to ensure they embrace the EHR. Finally, the EHR will be institutionalized and this will change the culture of the organization.
