Anticlue

Enterprise Wide Change Management

One of the basic functions of change management is to review, and be aware of changes that are planned on being introduced into the infrastructure of an institution. Also it is beneficial to be able to plan and schedule the release of those changes with minimized risk. It is a good sound process, but what if we expanded its scope from just technical changes, like software release and router replacements, to also include business process changes?

For example, one of the recent innovations that was approved by the FDA was drug eluting stents. Then new procedure and DRG codes were released. This dataset then needed to be uploaded into the billing and abstracting systems. Then I'm also guessing that a reimbursement rate had to be established, and that was probably discussed with the insurance companies. In addition there was probably training at the physician, coding, and biller levels. What if every change here went through a changemanagement process, when the procedure is planned to be performed, the uploading of the dataset, and the new business agreement. This way the business process and the technical process use the same utility to introduce changes. In the end it provides a historical view to the complete change for the new procedure. Also this becomes an ideal auditing tool when looking for improvements within processes.

Imagine the possiblity of changes with regulatory compliance. There would be a full scope of the changes introduced into the business. A central universal process would also improve communication overall for the institution.

The pitfall here, is that process would need to be robust and easy, and definitely not encumber the business from making changes to a process when needed.