Challenges to Implementing Healthcare Analytics

Executive Summary

During a workshop at the Healthcare Analytics Symposium held in Chicago in July, a study was conducted by the Healthcare Center of Excellence (healthcarecoe.org) to determine what the participants perceived were the top challenges they faced in implementing analytics at their healthcare organization. The participants included people from all levels of healthcare organizations from locations across the country. Each participant was asked to identify up to 5 challenges they faced in implementing healthcare analytics. They were also asked to then work in a group and develop 3 solutions to overcome the top challenges they identified. While the challenges facing healthcare analytics implementation may not surprise anyone, the ranking of the challenges might receive some unexpected attention.

The Root Cause of Many EHR Implementation Failures is Bad Leadership

We recently learned of another C-level executive resigning over a failed or challenged EHR implementation (CEO of Georgia Hospital Resigns After Rocky EHR Implementation). These stories are beginning to come with increased frequency as most healthcare organizations are deep into their EHR implementation cycle. If you look closely, the reasons are almost always the same, i.e., lack of physician engagement, difficult implementation time frames or lack of the proper resources. When I read these stories, I usually come to one primary reason for the failure – bad leadership in two distinct areas.