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Hospitals take next step down tech path
The HealthSMART Program has reached a major milestone with Box Hill Hospital and the Royal Victorian Eye and Ear Hospital becoming the first agencies to fully implement Release 1 of the program’s clinical system. Read full story on Health Victoria.
Victoria's Whole of Health ICT strategy 2009-13
IECHS PCMS implementation experience - Jordi Bird, IECHS HealthSmart Project Manager and Podiatrist
What was the journey like for the project team?
When we began the implementation of HealthSmart at Inner East Community Health Service in mid-2008, I was initially quite daunted at the prospect of becoming a Project Manager for the agency, having come from a Podiatry background. However, it was quickly realised that having a good knowledge of the organization (along with being a future user of the product) proved an advantage in overseeing many of the project tasks.
In the early days of the project I asked a number of staff to become part of my project team, who came from a mix of disciplines and experience in IT. We were very conscious of the many tasks required for a successful “Go-Live” and we promptly set upon a concise plan with the aim of minimising the time spent deciding on things like business decisions, making expenditure requests, risk management – small issues that can really slow a project like this down to a halt. As we were defined as a “small” agency, it meant that the resources allocated to our organization was comparably very small, however we of course still had to do the same amount of work as larger agencies!
Having a small, close-knit team with a good knowledge of organisational procedures to prepare the product to our agency’s satisfaction was a vital key to ensure that the project progressed smoothly. In addition, our expert representatives from TrakHealth (Trish Hyde) and OHIS (Kent Burgess and Richard Hurley) provided exemplary support and went out of their way to help us when we needed it most, as did my project sponsor, Chris Love.
How has the product been received within the Agency?
Throughout the implementation process, I kept staff and management frequently updated on major milestones met and the benefits TrakCare could bring to their day-to-day work. We also had full support from our Board of Management and CEO, culminating in the project being seen in a positive light to all.
With the new product being such a major change to general work practices, I had envisaged some less-than-enthused responses; however our staff have been very positive throughout the process and were always interested in seeing new features of TrakCare. I can see many advantages with the product to further improve our client care.
Two weeks after we went live, I attended a staff meeting where various questions were bought up about the new product. When I piped up to answer questions I was drowned out by everyone else offering their own solutions; it was great to see such enthusiasm! It will be very interesting to see staff levels of expertise with TrakCare over the coming months.
What were the learnings from your implementation that you think can be applied to subsequent implementations?
For future implementations, I would recommend:
- Encouraging sharing of information from past organizations that have gone through the exact same process; this will save many weeks of work
- Visiting a site that has already gone live with TrakCare
- Try to get as many people from your team to help out around code table and testing phases – both took much longer than originally thought
- Having one person take ownership of preparing back-end code, and sticking to this
- Performing rigorous testing, particularly with programs that interface with TrakCare
- Preparing training manuals during “super user” training – our manuals were pretty much completed by the end of this!
- Offering “refresher” training to staff just prior to Go-Live
- Preparing succinct business rules, simplified as much as possible to avoid confusion (particularly those rules around the lock-out period and Go-Live)
- Recognising and celebrating milestones along the way
Due primarily of having the support of such a great team behind me I feel the implementation progressed very smoothly. We ultimately enjoyed the experience of the HealthSmart project at Inner East Community Health Service.
Mercy Health’s PCMS implementation experience - Bronwyn Taylor, Program Director ICT, Mercy Health
Background
Mercy Health Services transitioned from the IBA Patient Administration System (PAS) to iSoft’s i.Patient Manager (i.PM) on the weekend of the 15 & 16 November 2008. i.PM supports the administration of all patient activity within O’Connell Family Centre, Mercy Hospital for Women, Werribee Mercy Hospital and their associated services.
What was the journey like for the project team?
The journey for Mercy has been quite a long one as our involvement with HealthSMART started in 2005 when asked to participate in the tender and selection processes. In Sept 2007, the project team was created and initially consisted of a project manager and project officer but rapidly expanded to include a core team of three project management staff, five business leads and three ICT resources and training personnel.
Challenges faced by the project team included: managing the interactions between Mercy Health, iSOFT and HealthSMART; and managing the expectations of current PAS users around what i.PM was going to ‘look’ and ‘feel’ like once it was up and running.
The pace of work from Key User Training onwards can seem slightly unrelenting and go-live a long way off, but the time passes very quickly! The project team found the work challenging at times and outside their comfort zones but it also produced in the team a problem-oriented approach and ‘can-do’ attitude that ensured workable, creative solutions were found for difficult issues and problems.
A side benefit was that the business leads by working so closely together on project activities established working relationships that would not have ordinarily occurred. They had the opportunity to review business practices from all areas within Mercy Health and look at business functions from a different perspective to their own operational areas. For some members of the team it has given them the opportunity to re-think how they would do things in the future and others are looking forward to the next challenge (after a well deserved break!).
How has the product been received within the Agency?
Whilst a go-live of a new system of this complexity produces additional workload as end users familiarise themselves with changed business processes, the implementation went relatively smoothly and the take-up rates for i.PM by users who were not traditional PAS users is encouraging. Nurse Unit Managers are using i.PM to monitor their ward activity in real time and theatre is moving to real time data entry.
What were the learnings from implementation that can be applied to subsequent implementations?
Mercy Health established a dedicated help desk to ensure that end users issues and concerns were promptly and systematically followed up by the project team and i.PM specialists. Business leads and PCMS trainers provided on the spot expert assistance to users in their departments and work areas to further ensure that the business operations of our services were not impeded by the transition to the new system.
The value of testing can never be overstated and Mercy’s commitment to a comprehensive testing regime that included not just business leads but also end users helped to ensure that critical business functions were minimally impacted by the implementation. This included early engagement with HDSS regarding the testing of statutory extracts which ensured that major problems were identified early and resolved prior to go-live.
Preparing for end user training is critical to the adoption of new technology. Mercy Health kicked off its planning activities in March with the appointment of a dedicated Training Officer with Cert 4 qualifications to provide expert advice and assistance to the project team and business leads. Training doesn’t just involve end users: it involves scheduling trainers, training trainers, establishing and maintaining a training instance of i.PM, producing and updating training material, monitoring and recording attendance and so on. Preparation and Steering Committee oversight for this critical activity has to commence early on in the project.
Another key initiative from the team was to issue user logins for i.PM during the end user training. This helped to ensure that user security profiles for business critical staff would be working on day one and any issues with logins could be resolved prior to go live.
Some interesting MH i.PM facts and figures:
- Configuration involved the set up of 99 Wards, over 700 Beds/Cots, 54 Outpatient Clinics, 204 Outpatient Clinic Sessions & 13 Theatres.
- Migrated over 1.2 million patient addresses, 1.3 admission/discharge/transfer records for inpatients, 100,000+ theatre episodes, 500,000+ patient registrations
- 930+ user accounts created
- Training involved 13 different sessions, 30 instruction sheets, 9 trainers running sessions over 7 weeks at two different sites.