Show them the goal
Geidt knew that the switch to electronic medical records would not be easy. After years of using pen and paper, the hospital’s staff members had become comfortable and set in their ways. Implementing a change of this magnitude could have been a disaster if it wasn’t properly planned and executed.
The first step is to make sure your team understands the goal and the reasons behind it. Geidt had to convince his employees that there was more to using electronic medical records than saving a few trees. His first step was showing them the bigger picture.
First, he outlined the benefits electronic records would have for patient safety. Then, he showed them how using electronic records would make their entire staff more efficient. Geidt says a typical clinical staff spends 40 to 50 percent of its time documenting medical records — time that could be spent taking care of patients.
“It’s ridiculous, really,” he says. “To go through that level of training and have that important of a job and then spend half of your day writing things down — that was the old ‘paper world.’ The idea here was to invest in not necessarily reducing employees, but on reallocating their time on things that make more sense.”
That was a goal the physicians could get behind. Geidt showed them how investing in paperless technology was a means to an end and how their staff would be able to spend more time on patient care and less time writing things down and poring through massive medical files.
“It required physicians to be engaged in why we were doing it — we weren’t doing it to turn them into clerks,” he says. “Although at the time, it must have seemed that way.”
Getting the buy-in of the physicians was critical to the initiative’s success. If they didn’t believe that the change would benefit the organization, it could have been a spectacular failure. Geidt met with them many times during the planning process to ensure the change had their support.
“They were very, very involved — they had to be or it wouldn’t have worked,” he says. “That’s what made that project work, and that’s what makes the place in general work. It’s not guided by me, per se, it’s not my goal — it’s the organization’s.”
During the planning process for a major change, it’s easy to get bogged down with tactics and input. However, Geidt says you must remember to never lose sight of the goal.
“When you articulate a vision that talks about what we’re trying to accomplish and not just the tasks at hand, which is to move from paper to computers, it is the vision of improving care that’s at the core,” he says.
“That is what we try to do. Explain the goal — which is to make life better for everyone and most especially for our patients — not just the immediate tactics to achieve that. When you do that, it’s amazing how much buy-in you can get.”
