Organizational Change Plan -- Part III:
As explained in the previous articles, the setting up of an Electronic Medical Record in a healthcare facility is a positive measure to improve the efficiency of the facility and cope up with the constantly changing technological world. The implementation of the system in a health facility is also beneficial in enhancing the quality of services, productivity, and the overall output. One of the most important parts of the implementation process is to determine the efficiency of the organizational change once it executed. The evaluation includes the use of various initiatives that examine the probable results of measurement strategies that are linked to the process. Following the implementation of the organizational change, determining its effectiveness helps in evaluating the cost, quality, and satisfaction outcomes of the change. Since the change is monitored gradually to promote its general acceptance by workers and smooth integration into the facility, the determination of the effectiveness of the change is a process that is conducted slowly.
Determining the Effectiveness of the Organizational Change:
An Electronic Medical Record system is considered as a great magnifier because it helps in improving the performance of the health facility. Nonetheless, the implementation process is usually a complex and difficult initiative with multidisciplinary aspects that stretches the skills and change capacity of the organization. This process is not only challenging but it may also provide occasional stressful learning experiences from time to time. The other possible difficulty associated with the implementation process is the development of employees' ability to embrace the new technology as they gradually move out from the conventional methods of manual storage of patient information. Therefore, developing an efficient outcome measurement strategy is important to identify whether the organizational change is successful or a failure.
In determining the effectiveness of the organizational change process, the determination of success at the beginning and the metrics to be used is important. The definition of these aims is critical since they help in determining whether the goals and objectives of the change processes have been achieved. The definition of success from the onset of the process involves the calculation of the foundational measure of performance of an organizational unit, process, and technologies to transform. Since it's an evaluation of the process or unit performance, the determination includes calculations on current costs, equipment, costs, time, personnel, software, and other related costs.
After the implementation process of the Electronic Medical Record system, its effectiveness will be determined through 360-degree evaluations and employee surveys. Through the use of the 360-degree evaluation method, the effectiveness of the change will be determined by asking employees to provide direct reports about the system. Secondly, employees will be asked to fill out opinion surveys after the change initiative as part of explaining their thoughts and any concerns on the system (Schroeder-Saulnier, 2009). The other way for determining the effectiveness of the organizational change process once its implemented is through the use of customer feedback forms. In this case, the facility's management will ask customers to fill out the forms about the quality of care services since the Electronic Medical Record system was implemented.
Possible Outcome Measurement Strategies Related to Organizational Change Processes:
As previously mentioned, the process of evaluating the performance of EMR will incorporate a joint task of workers from various departments to be affected by the change. These employees form the most reliable mechanisms for determining the relevant and efficiency of the technology because they not only use it regularly but they are also affected by it. The employees provide the basic channel to detect whether the organizational change process helps in achieving the objectives of the health facility. The evaluation of the performance of Electronic Medical Records also includes the use of various methods including cost measurement procedures.
Similar to other organizational change processes, the implementation of EMR at a health facility is associated with several outcome measurement strategies. Outcome measurement is important...
These strategies related to organizational change processes helps in meeting the requirements of program reporting. In most cases, outcome measurement usually helps in clarifying organizational understanding of the program or change processes. Actually, outcome measurement is defined as the systematic way of evaluating the extent with which a program or system accomplished its desired objectives and results.
However, the most crucial reason for carrying out outcome measurement is to understand the impact of the organization's work on the people it serves. As a result of feedback from these people, outcome measurement is used to help the facility to improve the efficiency of its services ("Measuring Outcomes," n.d.). As the health facility seeks to deliver quality and timely care services, outcome measurement strategies provide the basis for determining the quality of these services and patient outcomes. There are two major outcome measurement strategies that are related to organizational change processes i.e. compliance monitoring and evaluation.
Compliance monitoring is a term that is used today in organizational change processes, which refers to the agreements between the organization and the grant-maker regarding the use of money in implementation of the change or technology. This strategy keeps records on what and how much the program delivers, the people it serves and the involved costs. Since it entails the services delivered and the people receiving these services, compliance monitoring tends to be an effective outcome measurement strategy. In some cases, this strategy also contains information on the program's outcomes that is evaluated based on its intended objectives. For the health facility, this strategy will be used for outcome measurement as it will consist of what and how EMR delivers and the patients served by the organization.
The second outcome measurement strategy is evaluation, a concept that is widely used to cover the whole range of activities undertaken during the implementation of the organizational change process. Actually, this strategy is defined as the systematic use of social research procedures for evaluating conceptualization, blueprint, execution, and utility of social or health interventions. Generally, evaluation is an outcome measurement strategy that proves that the activities provide through the program are the reason for the change occurring for people receiving the services. Similar to the implementation process, this strategy requires more time and effort to evaluate the outcome of the organizational change processes.
Measuring Quality, Cost, and Satisfaction Outcomes of the Proposed Change:
Measurement of the quality, cost, and satisfaction outcome of the implementation of EMR at the health facility requires the establishment of an efficient framework. The EMR assessment framework basically consists of factors that affect the service value such as the quality of service. With the increase in the use of electronic medical records, determining their cost-benefit ratio has been one of the most challenging aspects of today's health facilities. These difficulties originate from the fact that implementing these systems not only include the cost of hardware and software but also requires the improvement of quality and satisfaction outcomes. As stated by Kotecha & Birtwhistle (2008), quantifying the qualitative benefits related to computerizing medical information can be quite difficult. Consequently, healthcare financial managers should be aware of the uses and shortcomings of financial mechanisms for evaluating electronic medical records systems.
The evaluation of the quality, cost, and satisfaction outcomes to examine the proposed implementation of the EMR in the health facility requires a multidimensional construct that combines various attributes. The most effective method of evaluating the effectiveness of the system is through the use of composite index since it combines various attributes that have been detected in the informatics literatures. The composite index is a method that is increasingly used to examine and rank performance of countries in various social and economic areas (Otieno et. al, 2008). As a result, it's an effective method that can be used to determine the cost, quality, and satisfaction outcomes of EMR…
