1. IT Strategic Planning
Methodology and Approach
David Shiple
Senior Consultant
June 2, 2012
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2. IT Strategic Planning
• An IT Strategic Plan (ITSP) generally covers a 3 – 5 year planning horizon
and ensures senior leadership is on the same page regarding
– What IT investments are going to made, when, and why
– What the value of IT is to the organization
– How IT investment decisions are made in the organization
• IT is generally the largest capital spend in an health system after new
construction – management should participate and drive the IT
investment decision-making process
• The “sweet spot” of an ITSP is the alignment between the business
strategy and the IT strategy
• The key construct of the ITSP is the gap analysis
– What it will take from the current state to the future state
• Since the arrival of the Meaningful Use, ITSP’s have not been a focal point
for many health systems, however, this is changing as key stakeholders
ask, “now what? – where is this frenzy of IT implementation activity
going?”
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3. IT Strategic Planning
Level-Setting Future State/ Gap Analysis Strategic Plan
Charter Governance
Consensus Workshops
Education Workshops
Opportunity
Interviews Clinical Transformation Validation
Benchmarking Physician Alignment Benefits/ Prioritization
External
Meaningful Use Implementation
Drivers
Planning
Current State Infrastructure
Strategic IT Enablement
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4. Methodology Overview
• Charter. An opportunity for DIVURGENT and the project sponsor(s) to
refine the project scope and critical success factors and memorialize in a
written project charter.
– What is the definition of success for the project?
– Who should be interviewed?
– What is the optimal workshop schedule and format?
– Where should DIVURGENT put their primary focus?
• Interviews. Structured, probing interviews conducted with a broad cross-
section of Health System constituents.
– Interview guides are prepared in advance and distributed
– Interviews are confidential with resulting “take-aways” aggregated with other
interview responses
– A generous number of interviews brings more people into the process and
produces more buy-in of the resulting plan
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5. Methodology Overview
• Benchmarking. Brings empirical evidence into the planning process,
measuring Health System relative to their peers. Compared to their peers:
– How much progress on MU has Health System made?
– How much does Health System spend on IT?
– How large is the I.S. department?
• External Drivers. Industry trends, government regulations, and other
forces driving Health System’s decision making process are fully explored,
e.g.
– Does Health System intend to pursue full meaningful use stimulus funding for
both their hospital and eligible providers?
– Is Health System positioned to convert to ICD-10 on time?
– Is Health System beginning to put in place the building blocks in preparation
for value-based purchasing?
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6. Methodology Overview
• Current State. The “as-is” environment is documented to ensure a
common understanding of the current state and as input into the gap
analysis
– Is there consensus among Health System leadership on the health system’s
current capabilities, issues, strengths, weaknesses, etc.?
– Did DIVURGENT miss any salient points on the current state assessment that
need to be added?
• Educational Workshop(s). Educational sessions to ensure that decision-
makers have enough background information to participate fully in
planning process
– Does Health System leadership understand MU and its implications and can
they communicate these concepts to others?
– Do the owners of MU objectives clearly understand what they are “owning”?
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7. Methodology Overview
• Future State & Gap Analysis. Where does Health System want to be in 3-
5 years? What is required to achieve this desired state?
– IT Governance. What type of IT Governance structure would optimally serve
Health System? Where can existing committee structures be leveraged? How
will expediency, accountability, and sound decision-making be instilled into the
IT Governance model? How will physicians be given a prominent role in IT
Governance?
– Clinical Transformation. How will clinical processes be optimized and fully
exploit the potential of Meditech’s advanced clinical systems? How will the
clinical community be brought into the transformation process? How will
change management and user adoption be managed?
– Physician Alignment. Does the health system and the physicians have a
common vision for the use of IT at Health System? Have physicians been
fully engaged on IT, workflow, and business model decisions? Do physicians
fully understand the quality and safety imperative and the role of CPOE and
MU?
– Meaningful Use. Is the vendor’s MU roadmap clear and unambiguous with
commitments to milestone dates? Are the Health System owners of the
objectives positioned for success? Have all necessary modules been
purchased, including needed 3rd party modules?
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8. Methodology Overview
– Infrastructure. Has the network, servers, service desk, training capabilities,
and other infrastructure components been “right-sized” to accommodate the
increasing I.S. customer demands (e.g. physician users)? Will Health System
pass a privacy/ security audit?
• Consensus Workshops. Facilitated, focused working sessions with senior
leadership to review draft recommendations and make key directional
decisions.
– 8-10 senior leaders participate in a 3-hour workshop
– Various models for achieving consensus are presented; the model with the
closest cultural fit will be selected
– Draft recommendations are presented and vetted by the group
– Key decision points – with pro’s and con’s of each alternative path – are
presented for decision-making and consensus
– A strawman matrix of opportunities and benefits is presented and vetted
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9. Methodology Overview
A strawman matrix of opportunities and benefits is presented,
deliberated, and adjusted
Health Clinical Physician
Information Integration Alignment
Exchange
MU Ownership
Achieving MU
Benefits/
ROI Medication
BCMA Reconciliation
Growth
Stark Waivers Charts for
inpatients
ICD-10
Lower Costs / Risks
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10. Methodology Overview
• Opportunity Validation. Following the executive workshop where a
strawman model of opportunities is vetted, the selected opportunities
are further researched and defined:
– Opportunity description
– General business case of the opportunity
– Key stakeholders involved
– Cultural change required
– Possible impediments to realizing the opportunity
• Opportunity Benefits/ Prioritization. The benefits and dollar ROI (if
applicable) are clearly articulated for each opportunity; the opportunities
are then prioritized
– Sample benefits can include quicker IT implementations, higher IT adoption,
increased safety/ quality, etc.
– ROI is measured in both soft dollars (e.g. time savings), and hard dollars (e.g.
actual budgets are reduced as a result of implementation)
– Based on the positioning of opportunities on a cost vs. benefit matrix,
opportunities are prioritized
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11. Methodology Overview
• Implementation Planning. Opportunities and regulatory-driven initiatives
(e.g. MU) are packaged into projects and placed on a master timeline.
– Projects are broken into high-level tasks and key milestones
– Projects are placed on a master Gantt chart, showing all dependencies
– Vetting of Gantt chart ensures that projects are done in a logical sequence and
in a manner that does not overwhelm the Health System organization
– Resource needs are broken down by skillset, month, project – summing
resource requirements across all projects provides total FTE requirements
– In addition to the projects, detailed tasks, and timeline, additional information
is embedded into the plan, for example:
• Meaningful Use best practices
• Project governance structure
• Critical success factors
• Change management strategy
• Communication strategy
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12. Project Deliverables
• Assessment findings for each functional area
– Management and Operations
– Finance
– Physician Alignment
– Information Systems
• Identification of those specific areas providing opportunities for Health
System to achieve the above listed goals in a well-planned, prioritized
manner over the next several years
• Identification of any impediments observed during the engagement to
achieve identified opportunities
• A first draft of a Total Cost of Ownership model which will be handed off to
Health System for refinement post project completion
• Roadmap for attaining Stage 1 MU compliance
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13. Sample Timeline
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14. Contact Information
David. Shiple@DIVURGENT.com
617.947.1925
DIVURGENT
4445 Corporation Lane, Suite 228
Virginia Beach, VA 23462
877.254.9794
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