Driving Value in IT through Strategic Planning
You are the CIO for a small community-based hospital that has 250 beds. Costs are high, and reimbursement
rates are low. The hospital has the immediate need to improve operating efficiencies within all of the current HIS.
In your tough market, the imperative is to drive down costs and maximize reimbursement. We need to improve
operating margins. The hospital’s goal is to improve patient safety, utilize patient data to drive outcomes, and
reduce costs in the upcoming planning year. It is thought that the move to an upgraded Electronic Health Record
(EMR) could help make that cost reduction realized. Currently, you have disparate systems all over the hospital
that you are looking to integrate through an EMR. You currently have no efficient integrations in the facility. All
the systems are currently in silos, therefore, making aggregating patient data terribly difficult. Additionally, you
are faced with the documentation issues post ICD-10 implementation. You are starting the budgeting cycle for the
next calendar year which you have earmarked $2.5M for expansions to your IT budget. One of the primary
challenges is the alignment of the IT function in the hospital. Currently, you are responsible for the IT deployment
and it currently sits in a “top down” silo within the organization. You get limited participation from the operating
departments and clinical staff in respect to the IT deployments. Additionally, your clinical documentation is behind
the industry. To bridge this gap, you are considering adding staff into your personnel in the upcoming year, and
maybe reorganizing the IT function to include ICD-10 and data analytics experts to help with the documentation
issues. You are contemplating if this is the right move. We also have 200 clinical staff that we are looking to give
mobile devices to (iPads/iPhones). They are claiming to the Executive Board that they could be 20% more
productive if they had the mobile technology and utilizing telemedicine. This mobility will allow them to access
patient and clinical systems which they cannot do at the moment from anywhere. The move to mobility requires
you to purchase 250 devices and manage them securely within your network which you are gravely concerned
about. The primary concern is HIPPA. Lastly, we need a strong social media campaign to educate our community
on all our offerings. Below are your challenges:
1. Outline at a high level your strategic plan for the upcoming year. Outline what you as the CIO intend to
accomplish given these conditions. (ie: timelines / objectives / types of technology solutions)
2. What is your plan to implement the EMR in terms of implementation process? Outline your approach to
planning and implementation. (plunge, phased approach – training. etc.)
3. Discuss the selection process you use for selecting an EMR vendor. This implementation will provide you
all the patient data you need from admission to discharge as well as outpatient services. Select a vendor
from current vendors in the market. Describe the value you expect to achieve from this implementation
and describe the vendor selection process (why you went with this vendor)
4. How will you determine the value the EMR implementation is providing the organization?
5. Outline the key characteristics of a successful social media campaign to educate our community of our
health care offerings.
6. Describe how you protect patient data within your systems to ensure there are no HIPPA violations.
Outline this concern particularly around the mobile devices.
7. Are there other types of applications or emerging technologies that may help the current conditions? If
so, which and how would you implement to get user “buy in”? Do some market research.
Create your strategy, justify your strategy, and explain why your approach will meet the hospital needs.
Peter Griffin, CEO