ERPs are Important Too

Since 2010, when the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) announced Meaningful Use, healthcare organizations have given significant focus to their clinical applications, dominating financial and human resources to achieve these critical milestones. Now that most organizations have certified on Stage 2 and the status of Stage 3 is up in the air, organizations are realizing that they need to pay attention to other critical applications, such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). ERP systems are relied upon to run business operations such as finance, human resources, and supply chain – many are out of date, limiting the availability of information to understand and react to the changing aspects of the business in real-time.

With our challenging reimbursement environment, healthcare must focus on doing more with less. This includes improving patient care with the same number of physicians and nurses, improving operational efficiencies by adopting leading practices and increasing revenues with the same antiquated systems. Today’s hospital C-Suite faces continued pressure to reduce the operating costs of their organization and increase revenue. A modern ERP system can be an invaluable tool to help drive efficiency improvements and reduce costs. There may also be some savings with paying lower maintenance fees on your legacy system or legacy systems if your organization has multiple ERP solutions in place today.

Putting a strategy in place for your business systems will go a long way in improving your organization’s financial future. Here are some key points to take into account.

1. System selection is more than just software – Most leading ERP solutions now have similar capabilities. Choosing a solution is about selecting not only a software package – but also embracing process change and a new way of thinking.
2. Understand what your business objectives are in implementing a new solution. What problems are you trying to solve and what processes would you like to streamline?
3. Factor in Change Management – Changing your ERP requires changing your organization. Is your staff ready for that change?  Incorporate change management into your software selection and your implementation so that your team not only accepts but embraces the new solution
4. Re-evaluate processes – Don’t’ merely put new software on top of old processes. Use this opportunity to challenge your existing processes and incorporate leading practices used by other organizations.  Use this opportunity to create a culture of continuous improvement, metrics-driven analysis, and challenging what “has always been done.”

Selecting a new ERP vendor is not something that you need to do alone. Optimum Healthcare IT has a dedicated practice focused on healthcare ERP systems to assist organizations in finding the best solution for their needs and developing an implementation and change management approach to lead to a successful implementation. We offer services around software selection, implementation strategy, staff augmentation, project initiation, change management, shared service design, workflow assessments, process improvement, and other services that help healthcare organizations with the journey to a new ERP.

Just as important as the system, is the team you put in place. Optimum Healthcare IT believes that the people are the most critical aspect of any project.  If you need help leading or staffing your team, we have experienced and talented staff ready and available to help.

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