Best practices in change management solutions from third party vendors
There are many third party vendors implementing programs with hospitals and hospital systems with varied success; what third party vendors have you seen do this most successfully?
Our program is customized and purchased by hospitals and hospital systems to improve the patient experience by providing an integrated solution for patients, families, and staff with with a suite of digital health tools, call center support, and in-person patient specialists to connect families to non-clinical services. We are responsible for implementing these solutions across practices and workflows, while also helping our clients develop metrics and measurements of success.
Although we tailor our solution to individual and departmental workflows, we are still implementing change management and novel solutions. My question, is what third party vendors have you seen do this most successfully? What change management programs have you implemented that have been well-received by physicians/staff? If you were to implement a solution, what is the one thing you would want a third party vendor to know?
We have used mostly smaller consulting firms with mixed success. There is a paradox for hospitals, we want to know what has worked in other places, but then we also all believe that we are different than other hospitals. Identifying and understanding what it is about each hospital system that makes it think it is different would be integral in developing any change strategies.
We used “Kaizen” to help us map out how doctors were entering data into the software.
Needed to determine 1) Number of clicks required by clinicians for entering specific details into the software. 2) The way the clinicians enter the data using clicks or F keys.
Change management is about showing people,whats in it for them, hold their hands to get to the outcomes and also achieve their personal benefits.
Kaizen was able to show how the doctors by using this specific program with increased clicks were slow, affecting productivity, leading to lower earnings.
They then helped make suggestions on how the software with minor changes would become user friendlier with less clicks,increasing productivity. Each clinic had specific days for training on the new changes to the program, each clinician was showed that over a year how productivity increased their personal income, how patient records were better kept. The changes also meant that we could get better data usage ,not just mining.
Having external consultants, with industry knowledge will bring about innovative changes, usually benefiting the hospital or clinics.
In my experience in using third-party vendors (or consultants) to attain a defined goal for my organization, the best way to guarantee their success is to truly embrace them as part of my team. For example, when introducing the consultant during a regular scheduled staff meeting, I stressed the importance they were an extension of our group and leadership team. By engaging the staff and reinforcing that the consultant is part of the group that share in the same vision/mission as our organization has resulted in successful outcomes (i.e achievement of the goals for which the consultant was hired for).
I firmly believe that consultants can only serve to fulfill narrowly defined tasks. They can help you to analyze certain numbers or processes (that’s what they train for at McKinsey….) Change management, restructuring etc. should be done by the company executives itself. In my country many companies that rely heavily on consulting in general are struggling….one of my professors once said: for any consultant you hire you should ask yourself if you are sure that you still know what you want…