Question

A PM’s ability to achieve a successful outcome can be impacted by the lack of standardization of project management processes. This case study is designed to help you understand the importance of the standardization of project management practices and identify ways you can influence the use of standard processes to determine what the potential problems and solutions might be.

You are a program manager who has been asked to implement a new electronic health record (EHR) to help meet new regulatory guidelines. You are enthusiastic about your role but have concerns about the lack of project management processes in your organization. You fully understand the ramifications of failure with the implementation, and so you are looking for ways to mitigate issues with a large number of departments involved.

You know that an EHR needs to be focused on patient care, quality, and business and clinical workflows. A multidisciplinary implementation team needs to be assembled and must include clinicians and IT and operational staff. Training for staff at all levels is required. IT will need to be engaged to customize templates and workflows.

The organization is unsure what value having one EHR will provide, so communication about benefits of such a system is important. You have a good relationship with external organizations who have implemented their own EHRs. You are planning a meeting with some of them to see what you can glean from what they learned, during implementation.

You need to effectively define the scope of work your project teams are expected to deliver. You are constrained by availability of clinical resources and related funding. You are told that both of these are not flexible, and your sponsor emphasizes the political nature of the situation. She asks for your input on how to best deal with these constraints from a project management perspective.

Discussion Questions

1. What do you propose to your stakeholder as possible solutions to the resource constraint issue? What might be project risks if resources are constrained?

2. How would you implement project management processes in your project even if they are not yet systemwide?

3. What would your first steps be to implement project management in this EHR initiative?

4. If there is resistance to the use of project management techniques, how might you influence stakeholders on adopting these processes?

5. Discuss why some healthcare organizations continue to underutilize formal project management practices.

6. What effects will a fully implemented project management methodology likely have on an organization? How might this impact the budget?

7. Hospitals are separated into many specialized departments that respond differently to project management. Discuss different aspects of an ideal healthcare organization that could be enhanced through project management.

Answer 1

1. I would suggest to the stakeholders that there is an issue of resource constraints and to resolve that we need to act as a team and should show the lackings due to the unavailability of resource to the administration and how it will have a negative impact on outcome . These resources are the base for our new innovations without that we can't do the daily routine tasks too.

2. Even if the project is not systemwide ,then also we can implement the project management processes by teaching the major steps needed to be followed by the staffs to conduct the project amoung the different center's

3. The first step in the project management process would be to introduce them the new project and it's objectives alongwith task delegation to each of the staff .

4. If there are resistance to the use of project management processes or techniques , I would influence the stakeholders by providing the information about the benefits of the project and how will it impact the organisation in a positive way .