“Clinical Transformation Project Powers URMC Strategic Plan”

Today, numerous providers deliver health care across a variety of settings, creating new communication and patient safety challenges. Our ability to realize the goals enumerated in our overall 2007-2012 Strategic Plan – especially, enhancing the quality and safety of patient care, and growing our signature disease and science research programs into national magnets – hinges on our ability to communicate information across our health system. This challenge in turn rests squarely on the extent to which URMC can truly harness comprehensive, integrated IT (information technology) solutions that foster collaboration and streamline work, making IT a strategic investment for the years to come.

URMC has solicited proposals for this “Clinical Transformation Project” – the name itself hinting just how much Medical Center leaders expect that this venture will help create safer, higher quality care through an improved work flow marked by increased efficiency, connectivity, and easier access to shared clinical information. Since this technology change represents such a massive undertaking – and ultimately, since its success will depend on the extent to which affected users welcome and embrace these new solutions – URMC leaders are conducting a careful planning process. To date, they have met with more than 300 Medical Center faculty and staff who currently use clinical information technology tools to perform their jobs (see chart for goals identified jointly by user groups and leadership). They’ve also engaged consultants at Deloitte, who have made it clear that this project is imperative if URMC is to continue to compete nationally for talented recruits and governmental research funding.

Given today’s volatile national economy, URMC leaders are advancing responsibly, orchestrating a comprehensive vendor evaluation process and carefully analyzing the financial feasibility of each proposal that is submitted. Timing and scope for the project must remain flexible, but leaders are committed and plan to, by December 2008, select a lead vendor solution to coordinate it; assuming that target is met, implementation could begin as early as summer of 2009. Upon completion, URMC leaders expect that our IT infrastructure will be on par with that at the nation’s top academic medical centers (AMCs).

Click here to read the RAND report, detailing why embracing new Healthcare Information Technology solutions is critical.