Healthcare Information Technology Research & Analysis : Coplan & Company : IT Procurement Management, Project Management, System Acquisition

 efore I taught a nine-week course on project management for health care IT, I contacted CIO’s of major hospitals and asked them what project management skills I should teach that most recruits are missing?

My students are mid-career clinicians that seek a role in IT project management. They want to manage health care IT projects to improve patient care and increase patient safety. For example, the Director of a Bone Marrow Transplant Unit and the Director of Clinical Operations each want to manage end users through all phases of an EMR project in their respective hospitals. After 10 to 15 years as clinicians, they are back in school in the Master of Science program on Clinical Informatics and Patient-Centered Technology at the University of Washington.

• The CIO’s responded to my question with the following list of skills:
• Leadership,
• Listening,
• Oral and written communications,
• Team building,
• Conflict resolution and management,
• Critical thinking and problem solving,
• Understanding and balancing priorities,</li>
• Balancing the big picture with attention to detail,</li>
• Understanding stakeholders' needs and</li>
• Change-readiness.

Responses emphasized the importance of "soft" skills, which tend to influence how people interact with each other. In contrast, there was significantly less emphasis on "hard" skills, i.e., more concrete technical capabilities, such as effective use of Microsoft Project software.

Everyone singled out the principle that the focus of projects is on how business changes, not on the technology used as a tool to support that change.

The most important tools and techniques identified included:

• Scheduling,
• Requirements definition,
• Issue tracking,
• Status reporting,
• Project costing and control, and
• Risk analysis and control.

Almost all of the CIO’s identified the need for a project management methodology flexible enough to meet the needs of their culture, for example a mix of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Software Engineering Institute (SEI) Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) and Project Management Institute (PMI) best practices. No one cited strict adherence to a single methodology as a workable approach.

The majority considered the best project management background to include versatile individuals who have deep clinical/business knowledge that understand IT. One individual cited that an excellent source for a project manager is administrative operations where you have a detailed understanding of business processes required "to get the job done", e.g., managing central supply, purchasing or facilities management.

The response from the CIO’s did not surprise me. Most project management methodologies focus on the tangible because it is too easy to convey. The intangible, while less easy to express and learn, is just as important and requires equal time in the methodologies and while managing projects.