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The MetroHealth System Develops IT Strategy and Tactical Plan
The MetroHealth System (MetroHealth) is a comprehensive academic healthcare system which serves as the safety net public hospital for Northeast Ohio. MetroHealth is comprised of a major medical center, a rehabilitation hospital, two long-term care/skilled nursing centers, an outpatient surgery center, and a network of community-based healthcare centers. Each year, MetroHealth provides nearly one million inpatient and outpatient visits – with overall revenue of $700 million. MetroHealth is one of Cleveland's largest employers with more than 6,100 employees and is in the top four percent of hospitals in the U.S. to achieve Magnet recognition for a second time.
The MetroHealth System
John McInally, CIO
“Aspen Advisors helped us to define our IT strategic plan, maximizing the value from our existing investments, while defining practical solutions. They helped us engage our senior leadership; provide education, awareness building and understanding of key issues; demonstrate successes (and failures) realized by other comparable organizations; gain consensus from our key constituents; and instill ownership.”
THE CHALLENGE
MetroHealth had recruited new executive and Information Technology (IT) Leadership to the organization and had made changes to the structure and leadership of the Information Services (IS) organization. The organization had historically pursued a defacto “best-of-breed” IT strategy, primarily as a result of an informal IT governance and prioritization process. MetroHealth was seeking consulting services to assist in establishing a knowledge baseline, developing an IT strategy and tactical plan, and facilitating consensus among executive management and medical staff leadership on a common direction and decisions related to IT governance and decision making.
THE SOLUTION
Because of its experience in and credibility with systems planning and implementation in large hospital and academic health center settings, Aspen was engaged to assist MetroHealth in developing an Information Technology (IT) Strategic Plan. Aspen worked with MetroHealth’s executive management team, medical staff leaders, and clinical leadership to develop its IT strategy and a multi-year deployment plan and supporting financial model. Engagement objectives included:
- Assessing MetroHealth’s current IT environment and planned initiatives;
- Educating the executive team on the state of healthcare IT and strategies that other organizations were deploying to obtain value from IT investments;
- Defining MetroHealth’s IT guiding principles (e.g., overall vendor strategy, enterprise/department focus of process and solutions, risk-return profile, funding perspectives and approach, value realization and sponsorship approach, degree of IT centralization, etc.);
- Recommending changes to MetroHealth’s IT strategy and governance model
- Identifying three-year tactical IT initiatives and supporting operating and capital funding require
- Establishing a project prioritization mechanism and ongoing process; and
- Facilitating consensus and ownership among executive management regarding future MetroHealth IT direction including strategy and IT guiding principles, governance and decision making, organization and management processes, and initiatives – applications, technology, and management processes.
THE RESULTS
As a result of the engagement, MetroHealth’s management team had a clear path and action plan. They had a common understanding of the future options available, the associated risks, and the organizational requirements to successfully implement and support the plan (operational, technical, and funding). IT was the first MetroHealth business function that prepared a long range view of its goals and then identified the investment required to sustain the organization. Key recommendations included harvesting the value from existing IT investments; supporting cross continuum patient care delivery (and disease management) by simplifying the applications architecture; implementing an IT governance structure and enhancing operational processes to support organizational transition; maintaining and selectively enhancing the current environment focused on high-value improvement areas, quick-hits and risk mitigation; consolidating certain departmental IS functions under common management; and implementing a structured IT Service Management process. Specifically, MetroHealth’s vendor strategy moved them from a “best-of-breed” departmental approach to an integrated approach across the continuum of care. MetroHealth had already implemented Epic clinical applications in its inpatient and ambulatory environments but planned to move forward with implementing Epic’s applications for ancillary departments, patient access, and revenue cycle while leveraging the Lawson ERP platform. MetroHealth’s organization model moved to a more centralized approach with better delineated and communicated responsibilities to ensure that systems and workflows mirrored a system approach rather than departmental silos. They also had a refined IT governance and decision-making model inclusive of the group charter and responsibilities, project prioritization criteria and processes, and project leadership and sponsorship criteria. The team had a clear action plan with key initiatives, prioritized with relative sequencing and funding allocated, and tactical plans to move forward executing with specific projects, timing, costs, and sponsors defined.
