Actions that support strong corporate culture in healthcare IT

Health Culture

Creating Strong Corporate Culture in Health IT

The tasks and activities that workers, managers, and executives in the health IT sector must contend with are unique to their own business area, however the large-scale needs of an organization operating in this sector are largely the same as the needs of any organization with a similar corporate structure. Communication within and between all levels of the organization is key to efficient functioning, clear systems of expectations, corrections, and rewards should be in place to motivate action towards organizational goals, and so on. What most of these general constraints come down to is corporate culture; through the establishment of a strong and positive corporate culture, all members of the corporation should not be simply constrained to acting in the organization's best interests but will truly be motivated to adopt the values and objectives of the organization as their own.

John D. Halamka, the Chief Information Officer at two major healthcare facilities as well as a practicing ER doctor and full professor at Harvard, wrote a recent article concerning corporate culture and the means by which it can be established (and how it is manifested in the organization, as well). Some of the necessary actions can be stated quite simply, though they might be far more difficult and complex to actually carry out: ensure that communication lines are open and transparent so that no one feels that an observed problem will reflect negatively on them personally, ensure that expectations and requirements are very clearly laid out and adhered to both by employees and supervisors/executives, etc. (Halamka, 2011). Other actions are more complex to describe and more subtle in their operation.

In order to establish a strong corporate culture that truly motivates professionals in the health IT field and in other organizations towards the adoption and carrying out of organizational goals with a positive attitude, action must be taken to ensure that setbacks are dealt with by adapting structures and policies rather than by blaming single individuals, and that people in the organization are motivated more by the excitement of success rather than the fear of failure (Halamka, 2011). A variety of specific actions can be taken to meet this goal, from various aspects of the communication and rewards structure in place at an organization to the guidelines for performance reviews and project debriefings. One of the most important actions that is necessary for any organization trying to create, instill, and perpetuate a strong and positively-oriented corporate culture, though, is the action that the leader(s) of a corporation must take in order to ensure that they embody and reflect the very culture that they are trying to create (Hamalka, 2011). This means engaging in no small amount of personal reflection, developing an open mind that can accept criticism (including constructive self-criticism), and working towards being seen as the leader one imagines oneself to be, rather than simply leading from a position or sensibility of commanding.