To help information technology departments succeed at driving new projects, it takes viewing the IT team as partners, not roadblocks.
That’s the aim at Illinois-based Advocate Health Care, said Rance Clouser, the system’s vice president of IT field services.
Clouser, who leads unified communications and collaboration across the 12 hospitals and 250 care sites included in Advocate's campus, is also in charge of corporate support services, reporting and analytics.
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During a HIMSS16 presentation, "Competing IT Priorities? Master Your Enterprise IT Demand," Clouser will discuss how Advocate achieved better outcomes on initiatives from social, mobile, analytics and cloud techniques, as well as infrastructure.
Clouser said that when projects are approached or denied, it's easy to paint IT as the bad guy, but business leadership should be making the big decisions and ensuring the IT department is heard.
His team has interviewed many organizations in the healthcare space and recognized Advocate wasn't alone in the need for portfolio management and interoperability.
When integrating processes over multiple institutions within one organization, it takes a lot of effort to get things just right.
"Apparently, I was pretty naïve when we started out, and I thought it could be done quickly," Clouser said. "Don't underestimate the effort."
Advocate’s leadership has allowed its separate sites to remain independent, Clouser said, and that independence in turn enables the communities to tailor their services to the needs of their region and demographic. But the individuality causes troubles with interoperability — an issue Advocate is currently trying to remedy.
"We've developed a system, fully in place to work with the business end, upfront, to make sure we're moving toward standardization and consolidation at each site," he added.
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Due to Advocate's size, and the independence of the individual sites, Clouser said, it was imperative to meet with all staff members to learn the culture and needs.
Communication is also crucial to ensuring a successful implementation. "Communicate early, often and repeatedly,” Clouser said. “Because it just takes so long for a larger organization to adopt new processes."
The session “Competing IT Priorities? Master Your Enterprise IT Demand,” is slated to take place March 1, 2016, from 4 to 5 p.m. in Palazzo B at the Sands Expo Convention Center.
Twitter: @JessiefDavis
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