Change Management in Healthcare

70% of all change initiatives fail. Why? Because changing human behavior is hard.

Newton’s first law of motion dictates that a body at rest will remain at rest (or at least in its uniform motion) unless directly acted upon by another force. You could speculate that change management would have fit right into Sir Isaac Newton’s wheelhouse were he to be a project manager today. Bring up the topic of change management in the hospital environment, and you now have a challenge on the order of Einstein’s theory of relativity.

So, What is Change Management?

Simply put, it’s the management of change within a group or organization. A ubiquitous term often interchangeable with organizational change management, change management has an uphill battle against inertia as well as a lot of moving parts that can get away from an organization if they’re not orchestrated correctly.

Regardless of the change management model an organization has decided to use, the common denominator between all of them is people, processes, and tools (often technology tools).

Successful change management requires frequent and clear communication between an organization and its people. Thus, an essential part of organizational change management is not only managing all the moving parts but also understanding how people process change. Change management and project management work hand in hand to minimize the ripple effects when change comes down the pipeline. Project management handles the tools and processes aspects during a change while change management focuses on people’s reactions to change.

Keriton’s Approach to Change Management

The focus of change management is to minimize disruption during the adoption of a new technology. At Keriton, we ensure that the implementation of the Keriton Kare platform at your NICU, PICU, etc. is transformational, not disruptive, and that the future state, post implementation, is well adopted.

Hospitals do not change processes or tools on a whim, and nor should they, as lives are in the balance.

Initiating change in a hospital environment is a significant challenge. In order to not disrupt the daily care of the most precious patients in NICUs and other intensive care units, Keriton has devised a phased approach to ease the change for the end users, either bedside nurses, milk technicians, and/or lactation consultants. The process is depicted in the following flow diagram:

While the above process may look a little complicated, it is actually a prescribed methodology to ease the hospital end users into accepting the platform and enhancing patient and employee satisfaction. The following phases are included in the change management process:

•  Customer Demonstrations - One or more customer demonstrations are held to provide a detailed overview of Keriton's platform capabilities - mother’s milk management, donor human milk management, and formula management. Demonstrations are led by a Keriton team-member and the idea is to get an early buy-in to move into the next phase of the process.
•  Solution Design (SD) - Likely the most important phase of the change management process, during solution design, the Keriton team works with the process owners of the different units (milk lab, NICU, PICU, Pediatrics, etc.) to understand their needs and workflows. The Keriton Kare platform is fully configurable to support your hospital’s workflows - from different expiration settings, to notifications, to recipes and more - the configurations are simple, yet robust. During this phase, we will collaboratively work to setup the configuration to accommodate your workflows.
•  Conference Room Pilot (CRP) - Once the SD phase is complete, a conference room pilot is executed with the hospital specific configuration. This ½ day exercise allows all end users to confirm whether the system meets their needs or not. The feedback collected during this phase is crucial to get a green light for a full go-live.
•  Integration and Training - These two phases are run concurrently post the CRP. During the integration phase, our integration engineers work directly with your IT/IS team to integrate different data streams like ADT, Feeding Orders (EMR), SSO, etc for one seamless data experience. In parallel, the training can be structured in a couple of different ways - either face-to-face (hands-on, simulation based exercises for the identified users) or super-user training (train-the-trainer - TTT) or via an online learning management system (for all users with didactic presentation, video overviews, and content quizzes). By the end of the training, all users are ready to use the live system.
•  Go-Live - Once all the training and integration activities are completed, the system is ready to be turned on with the first patients on-boarded. The Keriton team will remain onsite for a couple of weeks until the unit(s) are comfortable to execute their workflows on their own. In addition, the Keriton team will meet monthly with leadership to provide custom data reports and graphs to ensure the unit(s) are obtaining the maximum value of the platform. Of course, 24x7 customer support is available via phone and email should you need additional attention.

Relax, We Got Your Back

Yes, change can be hard. But change is natural and more importantly, change is crucial in order for an organization to grow and improve.

Strong leadership combined with clear communication works as a catalyst for change at the employee level.

Once the multiphase Keriton process is implemented, the unit(s) will reap the benefits of less feeding administration errors, a reduction of feeding administration hours, and insightful lactation data. When employees have an informed and accurate understanding of what changes are happening and how they affect them, they can become proponents of those changes—and that’s the kind of momentum an organization needs to stay at the top of their game.

Interested in learning more - we are happy to share more information. Contact Us!