It is a well established principle that "hindsight is 20/20." This axiom rings especially true in the healthcare IT sector as many facility managers in the present day made decisions for their organization that, when looking back, were not the best choices.
In order to garner better insight into this issue, a recent article published by Fierce Health IT features testimony from several CIOs to understand what these officials might have done differently in their profession if they had the opportunity.
For Stephen Stewart, CIO at Henry County Health Center in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, he regrets deploying an IT system without considering how technology might be evolving in the future. Consequently, he spent more than $2 million to implement a mainframe upgrade when two years later, the concept of hosted servers was one of the most salient trending topics in the industry.
David Holland, CIO for Southern Illinois Healthcare, was also too quick in his decision making. As such, his facility went through the trials and tribulations of implementing a foreign IT system, only to have it sit dormant several months later. Holland regrets having made the hasty decision without support from his team.
By the same token, Roger Neal of Duncan Regional Hospital in Oklahoma regrets failing to involve his staff when designing a digital entry system. Without doing so, staff were ill-prepared for the changes that occurred and the system was not as successful as hoped.
Considering these issues, it would be wise for facility managers developing major IT decisions to do so with the guidance of a medical technology consulting firm. With extensive experience adapting innovative technologies like electronic medical, electronic billing and eprescribing software to the needs of specific facilities, these professionals can help facility managers make IT decisions that work for all staff members and have longevity into the future.
Microwize Technology is a leading healthcare IT consultant offering products such as electronic medical records software and medical billing software from top providers like Allscripts and McKesson, including McKesson's Medisoft, Lytec and Practice Choice products.