Policy Management Software for Hospitals and Clinics Helps with Change Management

Shahid N. Shah | The Healthcare IT Guy | October 30, 2011

EHRs are a hot topic now, and they should be. Healthcare is taking drastic turns, and it’s not possible to fix every problem at once. But just how big of a deal are policies and procedures?

To understand the magnitude of policy and procedure management, take a look at two examples below of facilities – one large, one small – which have already implemented a policy management system (please note that “policies” also includes procedures, guidelines, protocols, etc).

If you do the math, the large hospital goes through an overwhelming 10,812 approval steps per year, with each step lasting more than four days. The small facility goes through 4,742 approval steps per year at an average of almost 16 days per step. Considering the time it takes for an approver to search for the document requiring approval, make changes and email it to the next person, it is obvious why manual policy approvals are so time consuming...