How a Lack of Resources Can Impact Your Digital Front Door
A couple of months ago, we shared a survey report from Huron Consulting on the evolving digital landscape in healthcare. One of the things they called were the top barriers to success with digital projects. We’ve been doing a series of blog posts looking at each of those challenges. The last one we will cover in this post is around lack of sufficient resources to drive the implementation of a new project.
This particular challenge has grown as health systems have struggled with high turnover and difficulty recruiting. Becker’s reported this as the top challenge for CIOs going into 2024, with 44% saying that, “Retaining and budgeting for qualified health IT resources,” was their top challenge.
It is probably obvious how this impacts the rollout of new projects. Every digital investment will require some amount of time and resources to implement and support. How much should be one of the considerations when evaluating the purchase in the first place. There are only so many resources to go around so planning out what resources will be used where is critical to ensure success.
For example, if the project will require one full-time person to project manage and another one to do any actual backend work then you need to allocate two people to that project. You also need to know how long those resources will be used. Is it three months or a year? If you don’t have two people to spare for that long and you can’t get additional budget or easily recruit for those roles then the project may not be realistic. On the other hand, if there is a project that only requires a few hours a month of IT resources and is largely supported by the vendor, that may be a better option.
This is one of the things that should be evaluated as CIOs look at what projects their teams can support. A successful implementation will likely mean a successful launch and that the project will be successful long-term. A poor implementation can mean the project doesn’t succeed just like poor training or poor launch planning can.
If resources are tight and you don’t have the staffing to support highly complex projects, consider the projects on your list that don’t require a big lift from your team. Prioritize those, get a few wins, and that may help with getting the budget and staffing needed to take on more complex projects.
There are some projects related to your digital front door and patient experience that really fit the bill when it comes to reduced use of IT. One is launching a branded mobile platform for your health system. When you use an established solution, it can be up and running quickly with a very low lift from IT. Another is conversation AI assistant. The best solutions scrape the data from your existing platforms like your website and can be up and running very quickly. Consider look at project like these that can be easily implemented when resources are tight.
