This is the approach followed by LeadingAge Member American Baptist Homes of the West (ABHOW). The governance status statements might read: Key strategies will help the organization reach its goals and address issues identified through the environmental scan. Bringing staff together to engage one another and the leadership in dialogue about the organizations vision moving forward. The worksheet could address broad categories like the organizations programs, resources, status, relationships, institutional development, use of technology, and governance. An organizations technology environment must be aligned with its long-term strategic plan, goals and objectives. President/Chief Executive Officer

For example, the leadership teams plan to grow a single-site organization into a multi-site organization will have a dramatic impact on the IT plan, including the hardware and software capabilities needed, as well as the scalability of the infrastructure. It also sends managers the encouraging message that they dont have to take full responsibility for ensuring the organizations progress. Once a customer purchases a server package, a vendor must install the server before it is becomes operational. Washington, DC So is searching out and investing in leaders with strong technology expertise. Health and wellness technologies are used in health promotion and include: For more information, see CASTs guide toHealth and Wellness Technologies, and theCAST TelehealthandMedication Management.

Segregating the resident network from the business network will enhance security. Outline how you will restore hardware, applications and data in time to meet the needs of the business recovery. Many of them have successfully integrated BI tools into variety of existing software, including electronic health records. Additional forces, including health care reform, have steered the field of aging services toward a vision featuring quality, coordinated care that promotes prevention, achieves population health and cost-containment, and maintains client satisfaction. Providing the commitment and support to achieve your goals. However, todays copper technologies are providing inexpensive bandwidth of 1-to-10 Gbps. These contacts can be used to create campaigns for marketing or fundraising. Use the results of these assessments to guide your training strategy. Or, it could ask questions about specific organizational characteristics like budget, staff composition, or desired technologies and IT infrastructure. Cognitive assessment technologies, reminders systems and cognitive stimulation technologies focusing on the mental health and wellness of older adults. 7.6.1.

Instruct persons on why and how the process mapping is being done. If you exchange patients with a hospital and youre planning to implement an electronic health record (EHR), it is advisable to obtain information about your partners EHR, if it uses one. Those risks might come from technical compatibility and application performance issues, data corruption, and missed data or data loss. Finally, consider selecting a core team of users, representing all shifts, to serve as trainers and offer support to end users. You might reduce the demands on IT staff, and reduce the need to hire additional staff, by identifying non-IT staff members who could serve as in-house ambassadors for your technology initiative or as go-to persons when peers need assistance. Jonathan Jedikin, DaVinci Digital Ensure solid implementation and training. Once it became evident that the life cycle of purchased hardware was dictating capital expenditures, the CEO and CFO decided they needed an executive strategic analyst who had fiduciary accountability for the enterprises technology vision. Rick Mallia, The Francis E. Parker Memorial Home, Inc. Comparison 5.3.1. What key indicators help the leadership team assess performance? Knowing the current state of technology today will ensure that its configuration and scalability will sustain the organization into the future. David Buckshorn, Wesley Commons Available online at:https://iveybusinessjournal.com/topics/strategy/using-a-change-management-approach-to-implement-it-programs. 10-Step Vision/Goal-Based Strategic Planning Additionally, the CIO is responsible for providing the organization with a strategic vision, creating IT goals, and developing a path for the organization to reach those goals. Strategic IT planning is an integral part of your organizations strategic planning and enterprise governance. Training It is critical that management follow through on the key change enablers: organizational structure, policies, information dissemination, training and development, performance evaluation and recognition.. You can use a variety of backup media: Back up your data as frequently as necessary. Instead, they need to view technology as a key enabler of the organizations strategic goals, and plan their technology investments accordingly.

The project implementation team should be an interdisciplinary team consisting of relevant staff, including: Clinicians (physician, nurse, pharmacist, therapist), if applicable. In an environment where less cost and more service seem to be the common public cry, the effective use of IT is the only way organizations can meet these lofty demands.2, Contributors This group can also offer feedback and input for system and workflow improvement.

7.6. The goal-based strategic planning process includes 7 steps, according to McNamara: While vision-based planning works from the future to the present, issues-based strategic planning works from the present to the future. Recommended Minimum Bandwidth Speeds, Desired Applications, Speed & Bandwidth Needs, and Future Demands, 6.3. System Integration and Interoperability Majd Alwan 5.3.5. Interface testing to ensure proper flow of data to and from the interfaced systems. Several EHRs offer advanced functions like clinical decision support systems, quality tracking and reporting, and health information exchange. 3Carter McNamara, MBA, Ph.D., Authenticity Consulting, LLC. Boosting the Role of Technology Professionals in Aging Services. This often happens when the IT leadership is not involved in the organizations strategic planning process or aware of all the organizations strategic goals. Organizations that use such a method will help reduce confusion when gathering information and observing product demonstrations. Creating that plan requires top-down critical thinking about what is appropriate for the setting, and what is important to the organization and its strategic vision, goals and objectives. Create a separate resident wireless network and connect it to a separate local area network (LAN) and a separate Internet Service Provider (ISP). Real-Time Planning A planning team should conduct strategic planning. Conduct a competency assessment to identify which employees are super-users. These employees probably already have some technical competency when it comes to using technology. It must ensure that it is not developing its own plans and objectives in a silo. 3. CIOs Duties and Accountability Dusanka Delovska-Trajkova, Westminster Ingleside Retirement Communities

What interfaces has the vendor already created that can be easily used free of charge? Organic (or Self-Organizing) Planning, Preparing for the Future: CAST Business Case Studies, A Population Health Management Approach in the Home and Community-based SettingsPhilips Home Monitoring, The Importance of Home and Community-based Settings in Population Health ManagementPhilips Home Monitoring, A Roadmap for Health IT in Long-Term and Post-Acute Care 2010-2012, 4.5. Writing Sub-Workgroup Selecting a cloud vendor that has expertise with health care clients and are: Compliant with the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) and the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act. Heating, ventilation and air conditioning control. Piscataway, New Jersey The planning team should emerge from step 3 with a set of high-priority strategic issues that would be discussed during a joint board-staff retreat, says McKay. This is a piece that is often overlooked. An emphasis on project results, rather than specific deliverables. These approaches include: Classify the application, based on how critical they are to reaching your strategic goals. The information-gathering process can be arduous, and can result in endless pages of notes and spreadsheets. Your questions will be different for each operational department. This understanding will help you realistically identify the needs for training and support on existing and new technologies that might be included in the technology plan. The vendor usually guides the process of configuring a system to meet the organizations unique needs. Use your defined S.M.A.R.T.

An external environmental scan, which identifies trends and uncertainties, as well as external forces of change. Is the software HIPAA and/or HITECH compliant?

Board and staff should look back to see its progress in meeting criteria for success. In short, strategic planning helps an organization project its desired future. The CIO, along with other technology professionals, plays a significant role in setting the organizations strategic direction helping it reach operational success. The internal scan assesses the organizations strengths and weaknesses. Executive Team, IT Leadership and the IT Team. These partners have an aging services focus and expertise: Audience: Available online at:http://mednet.sk/?show=general_netw&N. The Stratis Health Toolkit (no longer available) urges organizations to be candid about how processes and workflow really occur within the organization.

Step 7: Agree on Key Strategies 4.3.6. For example, board members may play a large role at the beginning of a planning process, when they will set the organizations strategic direction by developing or revising its mission, vision and values statements. The planning team will use the scan to identify the opportunities and threats facing the organization. Put a plan in place, before the system goes live, to address how the organization will maintain continuity of care if the system goes down.

Consider how software training can be incorporated into new employee orientation. Configure and manage the wireless network remotely in the cloud to reduce the burden of configuration and management of access points. This information will help the vendor gain an understanding of your organizations characteristics, including the number of sites and beds, levels of care, staff and unique services.

5.5. Basic Overview of Various Strategic Planning Models. Rather than following a series of defined steps, this model evolves and unfolds. Some strategies to consider include the following: Support should also be an ongoing endeavor and will not always be provided by the technology vendor. Task-oriented and able to move the process forward. During the implementation planning phase, the organization takes the information it gained during the assessment phase and begins to develop answers to who, how, and when questions. USING A CHANGE MANAGEMENT APPROACH TO IMPLEMENT IT PROGRAMS. This is a two-fold process that involves putting into place: When looking at technical measures for exchanging information, consider many of the conventional security standards for data encryption, Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificates and Virtual Private Networks (VPN) technologies. Executive Team, IT Leadership, and the IT Team. Any long-term, broad organizational strategy must take into consideration this larger technological vision. Comparing Products to Create a Shortlist of Vendors A facilitator should be someone who is: Sometimes a former board member or former executive director can fill this role, she says. Having a mobile platform for an EHR is essential, especially in settings where third-party physicians use their iPhones during their rounds. Clear and well communicated expectations and outcomes. Implications for the Selection of Technology Applications, 5.3.6. Encouraging staff members to become change agents. Carter McNamara recommends that organizations follow these guidelines when creating their planning team:5. It is not just for the post-implementation period.

Behavioral and health status monitoring systems. 2.3. Compile an inventory of hardware, software applications and data. Available online at:http://managementhelp.org/strategicplanning/index.htm#anchor3600.

Be sure to meet with each department so you will understand the departments future technology needs. Basic Overview of Various Strategic Planning Models.

Redundancy is an important property in bigger networks, according to Ondrej Kiss, a network consulting engineer at Cisco Systems.

Nor do they have to reinvest in new or additional servers because they can never outgrow the capacity of a cloud server. This refers to the point in time after the disaster when you will be up and running again. What areas of business is the organization looking to improve in the next 3-5 years?

Founded in 1949, ABHOW operates 44 communities in California, Arizona, Nevada and Washington, where more than 5,500 older residents live. The CIO is charged with helping the CEO and CFO understand all technology considerations and how they will impact processes and costs in each part of the organization. Identify potential problems in current workflows and processes and determine their root cause. The IT infrastructure includes a variety of inter-related components, including: Once the assessment phase of the IT strategic plan is completed, the organizations IT leadership should help the executive team consider updating the IT infrastructure to support all of the organizations potential technology applications, including applications that support staff and operations and residents/clients. 5.2. Ready recommends that businesses develop an IT disaster recovery plan by following these steps: Ready advises that you include the IT disaster recovery in thebusiness continuity plan. Here are a few suggestions from Visioning, Goal Setting, and Strategic Planning for EHR and HIE, a toolkit from Stratis Health that was developed for Aging Services of Minnesota: Long-term and post-acute care (LTPAC) provider organizations may be concerned about writing S.M.A.R.T. If the organization is small, all of these discussions could take place in full group before that group reached consensus on the organizations shared vision. Wi-Fi technology is most commonly used for wireless communication. Achieve a reasonable time-to-value ratio. "Our organization will become a center of excellence in short-term rehabilitation and a preferred referral partner for major hospitals, accountable care organizations (ACO), managed care and physician groups in our market. A complete understanding of workflow is needed to evaluate the impact of system changes on the current process. Consider using thistemplateto conduct a survey of general computer skills. That infrastructure should support all potential technology applications needed now and in the future, including applications that support staff, operations and management, as well as those that serve residents/clients. Specifically, the toolkit suggests that: How can you ensure that potential new users of information systems dont resist change? Lili Dwight, Connected Living Section 5 references templates, tools and resources on strategic IT planning that providers may find helpful. Campus/facility management technologies may include: Like other businesses, aging services providers generate large amounts of data. What existing reports could be improved upon? It should: Every strategic planning process is uniquely designed to meet a specific need, according to Carter McNamara, a strategic planning expert with Authenticity Consulting in Minneapolis, MN. Examine different data replication strategies available to determine which best suits your organization. Ravi Bala, HealthSignals Aging Services Technology Manager 6.3.6. Allows simultaneous use of EHR and high-quality video consultations. 6.4.2. Patrick Hansen, Medical Solutions Identifying Desired Functionality and Features This involves the important step of identifying desired functionality and features, and categorizing those desires as either something you need (must have) or something you want (nice-to-have). Following is an overview of its comparison. The Mesh topologies feature planned redundancies. Om Thoke, a web hosting expert, addressed this decision in a recent article entitled, Cloud Hosting or Dedicated Hosting: What Should You Prefer?, Thoke describes a dedicated server as the traditional, reliable and highly recommended way of hosting websites and web apps.. The strategic IT plan should reflect the relevance of technology to each of the organizations strategic business goals. Legacy Infrastructure and Mixed Environments, 6.2.4. McKay recommends that organizations transform the vision they developed in step 5 into a series of key goals for the organization. 2. Tim Sudderth, SureQuest Use these individuals to promote a shared organizational understanding during any transition. Outsourcing IT Support Your goal is to develop a short summary of the objectives contained in the strategic IT plan. You may need to add new technology support staff to the IT team. In most organizations, technology started out as an innovation that warranted a Research and Development line item in the annual budget. Collect all policies, procedures, forms and reports that are part of processes to be automated through IT. For each technology application, identify key desired functionality and features (needs) and also identify the less desired functionality and features (wants). 6.3. Joe Velderman, ProviNet Solutions The redundancy and stability of Internet data lines. This role is sometimes interchangeable with the Chief Technology Officer (CTO).

It is important for staff and other stakeholders to see and use the technology solutions you are evaluating. Packages can go as high as $1,000 a month. The dedicated server works like this: A user buys or leases a server from a provider and pays a monthly charge. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule. In addition, consider recruiting peer technology ambassadors to help facilitate the training. Technology governance is often overlooked, but it is essential to successful long-term implementation of a technology strategy.