Week 7

Health IT strategy is something that seems standard regardless of the organization discussed in our MHA program.  However, IT strategy is very different across organizations and varies much even within an organization.  For instance, the radiology department's work and platforms used is much different and influences the workflow of other departments within an organization.  With a 3-5 year strategy plan to implement new systems, many assume technology is a magical tool that resolves even the culture of an organization.  It may definitely influence a culture of an organization, but likely in a negative way when not properly balanced with meaningful change management.

A challenge I foresee for many organizations with the growth of health IT is variation.  One of the issues from variation that comes up is the lack of interoperability.  Even though many organizations are contracted with the same vendors such as EPIC and Cerner, each organization customizes everything even down to how the data is being collected.  This poses an enormous obstacle in streamlining what is necessary and valuable data and what is considered junk down the line.  This leads to another challenge with variation, the difficulty in addressing population health.  With data being collected so differently between organizations, it's hard for those who do want to address population health to even get the definition aligned as everyone has very different definitions to what to address.

I honestly take these challenges as a good thing in terms of my career in health care.  I don't think I'll ever be out of a job and because the obstacles health faces not only on the delivery side, but other aspects such as the payer, vendors, etc. I am encouraged that I will always find something that is of interest.