CPOE PM

CPOE Project

The clinician provider order entry (CPOE) system intended to dramatically reduce medical errors. The project was initially championed by executive management who pressured IT and the clinical teams to basically preform a miracle. After a change in management a new CEO was appointed who appointed a new CIO for the project. The roles and responsibilities of the team members were unclear and not well defined.

The project failed to organize an implementation team and identify a systems champion. In fact, the leadership changed hands on two levels during the project. The projects scope and expectation were never clearly defined and the rough plan they developed was unrealistic. The one detailed project plan that Martin created was practically ignored by Sparks.

There are many critical success factors in which Health Care Information Systems can be missed and result in project failure. Five of these case factors were identified as:

Lack of Clarity of Purpose -- Nobody agreed on the outcomes of the project

Lack of Belief in the Project -- Many people did not want to use the new system

Organizational Inertia -- Doctors did not want to take the time to use the new system.

Lack of Candor -- There was certainly no candid debate about the realistic timeline of the project.

Project Complexity -- The project was far more complex than was recognized by the leadership.

Using these success factors as criteria for what could have been improved in regard to project management in the project the follow recommendations have been made:

Lack of Clarity of Purpose -- the project champion needed to spend more time trying to build a consensus about the effectiveness of the new system.

Lack of Belief in the Project -- the hospital could have been shown another hospital that was already using the system so they had a better idea of what to expect.

Organizational Inertia -- provide a better reward system to get user buy in.

Lack of Candor -- Martin should have been sterner with Sparks or possibly gone over his head. Sparks was an incompetent manager though.

Project Complexity -- Some like Martin should have been brought in earlier to go over the project scope or at least the original team should have been given sufficient time so that they would not have had to rush and made careless errors.