Client

Our healthcare services client is a not-for-profit health care organization (HCO) that provides mental health care to children. It has the largest staff of psychiatrists, psychologists, therapists, nurses, and mental health counselors specializing in treatment of children ages 3-17 in the region. Our client provides multiple services that include outpatient services, acute care, on-campus 24-hour treatment and on-campus day treatment.

Area of Focus

To meet its growing needs and improve access to quality care, our client decided to refresh its technology stack and implement Electronic Medical Record (EMR) capabilities at all its facilities. The EMR technology would allow them to better align their people, process, and technology to deliver quality care, a safe environment and better access to mental health services across south Texas.

Challenge

The rollout of EMR technology is a complex task that required the availability of a reliable and scalable technical infrastructure to host the application, integration between existing applications and the EMR, and, the availability of desktops and handheld devices (client machines) to access EMR. The client’s IT department felt they needed external experts to perform an extensive due diligence due to the complexity of the technology transition and transformation.

Technology Assessment & Due Diligence

The client requested Y&L to perform a comprehensive assessment of business demand and strategic drivers to help define and set a strategic direction for the IS organization. Our IT strategy consultants used a 5-step process to understand and document the current business issues and technology gaps, current technology footprint and quality of service, as well as, business demand and strategic drivers.

Early Assessment / Kickoff: Overall goals, deliverables, timelines, and the process for information collection and analysis was shared.
Where are we? Assessment: Through stakeholder interviews, this step established the “business truth” of where the organization is today and created a baseline for the application portfolio and business issues.
Where do we want to be? Definition: This step identified and captured the drivers for transition and the IT capabilities that will be required to support the business during and after the transition. Aggregated business-driven technology needs were identified.
How will we get there? Plan: Adoption of EMR and other IT capabilities was going to significantly increase demand for IT services. A multi-year phased rollout approach along with recommended solutions for software architecture, infrastructure upgrade, staffing, and hosting plan were shared with the client.
Execution and measurement: A detailed project plan along with anticipated hardware and development resource costs were presented for the rollout.

Key Deliverables

Mapping between Business Strategy, Business Objectives and IT Capabilities
Current State: Core Business Issues, Application Portfolio – list of applications, Technology Value – majority of effort was spent on “Lights On”
Future State / Technology Roadmap – IT Capabilities Required to support the transition, Application Architecture, Infrastructure Upgrade Plan, Desktop Upgrade Plan, Staffing Approach, IT Governance, Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Plan, Financial Plan

In order to ensure EMR and business continuity readiness a high level roadmap was delivered to the organization to act as an Executive Guide along with fully detailed specifications, cost breakdowns and IT development phases.