Driving impact in health care through operational readiness

Creating operational readiness for sustainable change

Operational readiness enables a structured, systematic analysis of the gap between current and future state operations and the impact a technology implementation will have on policies, processes and roles, as well as tactics to mitigating those risks associated with adoption. Through a robust operational readiness program, health care provider organizations can successfully support the adoption needs of their providers, clinical staff, and non-clinical functions in tandem with technology-enabled transformation.

This brief, informative piece provides insights including:

• How providers can use the operational readiness framework in an electronic health record (EHR) implementation 
• Case studies of providers utilizing operational readiness to enable technology transformation initiatives
• Smart first steps to get started

Operational readiness for health care providers’ technology-enabled transformation initiatives can help leadership teams stay on strategy through timely and effective preparation of leadership, management, and staff for their future state operations.

Enabling electronic health record transformation through operational readiness

The EHR transformation is a prime example of a large-scale health care information technology project that not only has widespread disruption to people, process, policy, and technology but also significantly benefits from a structured operational readiness program. Operational readiness brings the organization to the highest level of adoption by focusing on the service line, department and employee stakeholders in addition to the technology. Recognizing that each facility, department, and unit will experience change differently during implementation, operational readiness teams focus on defining the specific job role, process, and policy changes that the system will introduce to each employee segment. In essence, by adapting adoption and achieving this layer of granularity, staff may be able to understand the change in how they complete the work and not just the global changes taking place.

For adoption during an implementation or optimization to be sustainable, it should be personal. Each individual within the organization should be prepared for and committed to the new future state for a transformation to be successful.

Executing this level of readiness planning and socializing these changes in advance paves the way toward successful end user training, as it gives users a chance to be comfortable with changes before they have to learn a new tool that they will use in their day-to-day work. The understanding of new processes and responsibilities helps to build credibility for the system, building trust that it provides the patient safety, quality, and financial performance that the organization looks to achieve.

Smart first steps to get started

• Define a governance structure to identify natural operational owners of readiness and provide oversight of the program
• Designate an operational readiness team to lead the project’s readiness activities across the organization 
• Partner with information technology to create a tactical approach and methodology for systematically identifying and documenting the process, policy, and job role changes
• Liaise with operational leadership to develop action plans that they can use to implement, communicate, and sustain change
• Prepare end users for the future-state through tailored readiness activities such as workflow impact assessment, policy changes, soft go-lives, and user interactions with the system