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Kishore Shinde
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The healthcare industry has been relatively slow in adopting information technology in compared to other sectors. The bigger hospitals have rolled out IT solutions however the smaller hospitals which contribute 60 per cent of the total hospitals has still not adopted IT solutions. IT in today’s age plays a vital role in the healthcare sector as it significantly takes part in improving patient care as computerised healthcare is still in its evolving phase in India.
It is important to select the right software which supports the hospital to work efficiently and also make the institution profitable. Once a hospital selects the accurate software, the next important step is to implement the same. However diverse aspects can serve as a challenge during the implementation process.
Let us understand those challenges:
Availability of skilfull staff
One of the most common challenge the hospital faces is limited staff expertise and availability. Some hospitals lack a dedicated IT professional staff. The person in charge juggles multiple responsibilities and is unable to solve the issues faced during the software implementation. This can be mitigated using a software which is simple to use, and employs common English language rather than medical language.
Comfortable working manually
The senior staffs of hospitals are generally reluctant to IT as they have always been comfortable working manually. They refuse to learn the functions and consider IT an additional burden. This can also be mitigated by enforcement from top management with specified timeline.
Confused vendor
The vendors in charge of imparting knowledge to the hospital staffs are sometimes confused and unable to understand the administration guidelines. This is a crucial factor as the vendor needs to have clear idea about the hospital processes before training the individuals; he should know the training priorities and roles defined. This ensures that the products align with workflow as they are designed to support identified goals and objectives. The top management, the vendor involvement in understanding the current process and provide training to all the stakeholders to visualise the gain will help to mitigate this problem.
Unavailability of master data
If the master data is not ready then the employees get trained in dummy entries. They get used to updating the master entries where rates of investigations are not properly updated. It is advisable to first get the master data ready and then start the training with all the roles and privileges set so that the employees get used to the workflow from the first day. Here clarity, training and requirement management can help to make the implementation easy.
Connectivity and hardware problems
The software cannot be implemented if the network and LAN are not working properly. Both the Hardware and software installation should be done at the same time so that problems at this level get sorted out easily.There should be a good internet connection so the support is available online which will save precious time.
Conclusion
It is also not uncommon to find that a year or so after a ‘successful’ HMS implementation, the hospital administration has stopped using it. This might be either because the software was not user friendly or the workflows were not well planned and configured. Changing the way people work and behave can be challenging. There can be resistance for a variety of reasons. Daily meetings with the staff and discussion about their problem areas with the implementation can help them overcome the problem they face. So before getting ready for software implementation the hospital administration should have their priorities in place.
There are good software like RxOffice which are easy, user friendly and simple to implement.
(The author can be contacted at 9892869870)
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