Week 1

By Max Vrooman:

The topic this week has been especially interesting given my experiences this summer at my internship at UW Medical Center.  UW Medicine is currently in the process of reorganizing their organizational structure with regards to their IT departments.  I work in the Center for Clinical Excellence which analyzes clinical data at UWMC for use in quality improvement projects throughout the hospital.  In order to ensure data security, they decided to revamp the way that they make PHI available to staff members and who is able to access it under what conditions.  To facilitate this process, they hired a Chief Analytics Officer who is helping to restructure where certain types of data are housed and who has access to them at what times.  This role is not found at many healthcare facilities and represents UWMC’s commitment to using the data available at an academic medical center with significant technological resources to the fullest.

Many different competencies are required to perform his role.  He first needed to quickly gain an understanding of all of the relevant departments within the organization, how they fit together, and what their strengths and weaknesses are.  Then he had to put those thoughts into a clear and compelling vision for varying amounts of changes to the job description of hundreds of employees without losing any of their support.  This was an incredibly difficult task but through individual meetings with departmental heads followed by talks to each department it appears as if he has mostly accomplished these goals.  That leaves the even more daunting task of keeping up enthusiasm for change throughout all of the stages of implementation.  Seeing this process in action has given me an appreciation for the importance of change management.