The healthcare industry faces problems unique in the business world. Healthcare organizations must meet government regulations and laws, while at the same time complying with insurance policies, professional and ethical standards, and patient expectations. Electronic medical records have introduced a new layer of complexity to this endeavor, with many organizations struggling to meet Meaningful Use guidelines. Proper project management can help ease the transition to EMR, and can help with many other problems facing the healthcare industry.
Credentialing
For a one-provider clinic, keeping up to date on credentialing is not a big deal. But for a large multi-clinic healthcare system, it becomes a major project. Each doctor, nurse practitioner, and physician assistant may have one, two, three, or more active credentials that need to be kept up-to-date. And the requirements for each credential will vary from continuing education, to membership dues or clinical reports. Keeping everything organized and updated requires excellent organization, inter-departmental communication, and teamwork – all hallmarks of an effective project management team.
Joint Commission Visits
The Joint Commission provides routine visits to healthcare facilities to ensure that they are compliant to its standards for safe and effective healthcare practices. To prepare for a visit from the Joint Commission, many hospitals and organizations will create a project team to do a pre-visit inspection. An understanding of risk management, a detailed checklist and an organized schedule will keep a project like this on track.
EMR Transitions
One of the biggest and most overwhelming projects that a healthcare organization will face is a transition to Electronic Medical Records. Whether transitioning from paper charts for from a different EMR system, this process is tedious, time consuming, and fraught with potential for disaster. If a project management team is not in place for this transition, there is no way it can be successful. The team should have members from the clinical side, administration, and IT, because EMR systems encompass, and coordinate, all these areas.
Training or Hiring a Team
Once you realize the importance of having a Project Management team as part of your healthcare organization, you may start to wonder: should I train existing employees, or hire a new team? That really depends on the size of your company and the amount of work your project(s) involve. If you decide on training existing staff, consider having them PMP certified. A PMI Project Management Professional certification will ensure that your employees know how to handle all the responsibilities of a project manager.
A PMP certification covers a huge range of skills, including:
- Project Initiation
- Risk Management
- Benefit Analysis
- Scope Management
- Project Scheduling
- Communications
- Quality Standards
- Vendor Management
- Project Monitoring
- Gathering Feedback
- Project Review
- Situational Awareness
A required part of the certification process is a minimum of 35 hours of project management education. that’s where Project Vanguards comes in. We offer the most thorough PMP certification prep courses and the most valuable resources for our students. And best of all, we offer special rates for groups, so you can train all of your employees at once, without breaking your budget!
