Rosemary Hossenlopp, founder of Project Management Perspectives is the facilitator of an audio series by key project management professionals on what Business Leaders must understand about accelerating execution of strategy through projectized work.

She interviews Mike Jenkins, the Managing Director of the Quilogy Healthcare National Practice. Mike is a PMP(r), an MBA, a member of HIMSS and MS-HUG, and has been influencing the vision and development of technology solutions in the healthcare space for a decade.

Click below to listen to the interview. Approx 6 minutes.
Interview

The project management industry is facing challenges. One of them is showing that we actually help improve project outcomes.

What’s the story behind the topic of How Project Management improves Healthcare Stimulus Outcomes?

The US Government has set aside $147 Billion Stimulus dollars for Healthcare. $19 Billion is to encourage physicians to migrate to electronic medical records and to show “meaningful use” of this technology to benefit patients. Today there are hundreds of thousands of practicing physicians who still use paper. They are overworked and do not have time to learn new technology.

The Project Management community has tools and techniques to get it right the first time, save them time, and make them money. It is possible for a single physician to earn twenty thousand dollars from the US government if they act quickly and show value by deploying and Electronic Medical Record system. Hospitals earn even more.

Health Care Stimulus Spending Background

Feb 17, 2009 President Obama signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, Aka the “Stimulus Bill”
- Worth $787 Billion dollars.
- $147 billion of this was set aside for healthcare improvements
- ALL of this is intended to benefit the patients by …
Increasing healthcare transparency
Reducing errors
Getting the patient more involved in their treatment options
Decreasing rework
This will benefit the healthcare industry by
Allowing patients to manage their own data
Provide electronic records that can be searched, copied, and transported far more efficiently than the current paper-based charts.

So what are the challenges?

- The average practicing physician today has more debt, less time, and gets paid less than ever. They are pushed to see more patients and their insurance costs are higher. Many are leaving healthcare.
- Their schedule is based around spending no more than 5 minutes with each patient.
- There are technologies in the market that can help them, but they don’t have time, money, or motivation to invest in installing and learning these technologies.

Stimulus package starts by providing the carrot to anyone willing to get in early. A physician can earn up to 20 thousand dollars depending on when they start using the technology.
8 thousand if they show meaningful use in 2011
6 thousand in 2012
4 thousand in 2013
2 thousand in 2014
After 2015, they are penalized for not using this technology

How Does Project Management Help the Health Industry?

- These physicians can use project management techniques to install, configure, test, train, and prove meaningful use of electronic medical technologies.
- Not using this approach will cost them time. It will cost their staff time. It will decrease patient safety.

They will miss the Stimulus checks.
All of these can be avoided by using Project Management techniques too:
Plan the tasks
Stick to the plan
Make it important and relevant
Follow-up quickly when off-track
Get patients on board
Earn the Stimulus money

We have shared that (Project Management should be used to help Physicians qualify for Stimulus money. Mike Jenkins has decades of experience.

He knows the healthcare industry.
He knows how to use technology to improve outcomes.
He knows how to manage these types of projects.

He can be contacted at www.Quilogy.com

Tags: Billion Dollars, Electronic Medical Record, Electronic Medical Record System, Electronic Medical Records, Facilitator, Health Care, Healthcare Industry, Himss, Key Project, Management Perspectives, Medical Record System, Mike Jenkins, New Technology, Obama, Organizational Management, Organizational Project, Pmp, Project Management, Project Management Community, Project Management Industry, Project Management Professionals, Project Outcomes, Quilogy, Reinvestment Act, Stimulus Bill, Technology Solutions, Thousand Dollars

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