Is Healthcare So Distracted by the Trees That We Can’t See the Forest?

I was listening to a healthcare IT professional talk recently about the challenges they face in the trenches. In a somewhat exasperated way they said more or less that “We have to be careful that we don’t get so distracted by the trees that we can’t see what’s happening with the forest.

What an amazing insight! As a healthcare IT professional, it’s really easy to get bogged down in the operational day to day requirements. Whether you’re dealing with meaningful use requirements, prepping for ICD-10, upgrading your EHR software, managing your patient portal, updating your CDS rules, or any of the myriad of regular IT support like desktop replacements, network upgrades, firewall management, etc etc etc, it’s easy to get bogged down in this more operationally focused work. How many healthcare IT professionals keep an eye on what’s happening with healthcare in general?

Unfortunately, I think far too many of them are completely overwhelmed with operations. Most of them don’t realize the movement towards a more engaged patient. A lot of them don’t know about the shifting reimbursement towards a new value based reimbursement model. Most are up to date on the ICD-10 delays, but few understand if the ICD-10 delays are a good or a bad thing for healthcare.

In some ways, that’s not a terrible thing. There’s a real power in being focused on the project at hand and executing it at the highest level possible. Especially if you have a great leadership organization that’s keeping a keen eye on macro healthcare trends that need to be considered by your hospital.

However, even the very best leaders can learn and benefit from a highly involved workforce that understands not only the immediate operational needs of the organization, but that also have a broader understanding of why certain projects matter to an organization in the bigger picture. There’s nothing more challenging to a leader than to push forward a project which isn’t understood as being important by their staff.

Like in most things in life, it takes balance. Finding that balance in your organization can provide some amazing results.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

   

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