Challenges and Forces Driving Adoption Of Health Information Technology and Electronic Healthcare Records

In this segment on Electronic Healthcare records, being sponsored by Physicians Office Resource, we will look at: 

How and what to do with Consultants and REC’s:

The 5 Key Steps to Putting Your HIT Partner to Good Use:

Consultants & RECs

Once you have found the HIT Partner that you believe will best meet your needs, you have to make it (them) truly your partner. The key to them becoming a valuable partner is to:

• Construct a specific listing of activities that describes all the activities necessary for a successful outcome/project
  • The content of that listing must include activities that are seen as  important by both your practice and your partner
• Formally decide on what you want them to do, and let them know what work you are reserving for yourself or (other vendor partners).
  • Be candid with yourself as to the activities for which your staff are not qualified or will be unavailable
  • Clarity as to who is to do what prevents unfulfilled assumptions, which eventually kill a partnership
• For every activity, it is essential that both parties define any work that is dependent upon them, and any related responsibilities (please refer to Format A, Activities & Responsibility Display)
  • This will show individual obligations as well as interdependencies
  • This material should specify the product or deliverable to result from the completion of each activity
    • This applies to the work of both the consultant and the provider
    • If the party responsible for the work has limited resources (hours) to complete the work, that limitation should be written down so everyone can be aware
      • RECs frequently have substantial resource limits, and try to off-set this limitation by providing written guidance materials that must be ultimately carried out by the provider. It is important that the REC so specify those activities that will be handled in this fashion.
• Formally establish a process in your contract in which you review the written credentials of a prospective resource that will be assigned to do the partner’s work.
  • Reserve, in writing, the right to reject proposed personnel that, in your judgment, lacks the skills or education to do the assigned work
    • This will become increasingly important as time goes on, as vendors and partners will have increasing difficulty in bringing on and assigning significantly experienced resources
    • Understand that rejecting proposed personnel will likely mean that your project schedule will experience delays
  • At any point that an assigned resource proves seriously inadequate to the task, you can, and should, request a discussion on the matter and, potentially, the removal of that resource
• Formally establish a schedule for all of the above project activities, and clearly designate the individual, or individuals, responsible for the activity conforming to  that schedule.
  • Generally have one person ultimately responsible for the completion of an activity
  • Be careful to consider the dependencies between activities so that the schedule is realistic
  • All activities should have a defined deliverable
    • Remember that the due date for most activities is dependent on
      • When the precursor conditions will be in place for it to start, and
      • The time it takes to complete the work
  • All deliverables should be reviewed and formally accepted
  • Any activity that takes more than 2 weeks to complete should be broken down into component tasks that then allow the activity to be more closely tracked