Post-Deployment Assessments Help Healthcare Providers Improve ROI

With all the work that goes into deploying a new clinical communication and collaboration platform, it can be tempting to believe the work is complete once solutions have been rolled out. Yet there are good reasons for project teams to check in with frontline staff after they’ve used a solution for a while.Despite their best intentions, a project team may have designed workflows that don’t work well in practice. The only way to find out is to solicit users’ feedback. Another common scenario occurs when a project team intends to augment an initial deployment with additional enhancements that become buried in ever-changing organizational priorities. Unless the enhancements address an immediate business driver, they may fall by the wayside as other initiatives take precedence. In addition, vendors may update a platform with new features or capabilities, but without a method for capturing those advances and communicating them to users, they may never make it into workflows.Culture and operating models will determine the style and frequency of feedback loops. Some organizations might set a post-deployment standard of quarterly or annual check-ins. Others may use brief surveys during deployment so they can make adjustments along the way. If a year or two has passed since an organization deployed a new platform, that’s a great time to assess its effectiveness by asking for user feedback.Evaluate How Well Platforms Are Working for Frontline StaffAn excellent first step is to reconvene the implementation team that planned the platform deployment. If clinical processes are humming along, that may well be the end of the discussion. Often, though, project sponsors are already aware of rumblings from frontline staff about pain points related to the platform or its adoption.If there are opportunities to make improvements or investigate further, the team can decide the best way to proceed. At a minimum, that should include conversations and observations on the floor to understand how the platform works for users. In the language of lean processes and Six Sigma, this is the “get to the Gemba” moment: Instead of designing workflows and procedures in a vacuum, IT and organizational leaders should watch them in action and obtain direct feedback.