Healthcare IT Insights

I’m hearing this issue more and more over the last year: many healthcare organizations spent tens of millions of dollars since Y2K on ERP solutions addressing the needs of “back office” functions such as General Accounting and Finance, H/R, Payroll, and Materials Management. Too often those investments were made in haste to meet the ominous deadline of the new millennium and did not allow time for thoughtful consideration of related process and organizational changes that might have increased the benefits realized from those major investments. Did you consider the advanced capabilities of your system such as Position Control or did you simply celebrate the ability to meet Payroll deadlines in the year 2000? Is your I/T or Finance Department still in the business of generating reports or have you considered what is required to make good information available in a secured environment for self-service?

So now it is 2008 and many organizations are looking at a major upgrade. Staff is spread thin. The end users have not been thrilled with the usability of the system. A system that has now become part of the routine operations. I’m curious, where is the tipping point that causes an organization to consider a renovation in parallel to the next vendor driven upgrade cycle? Any thoughts?