COPLAN AND COMPANY | Helping Those in Need with IT Project Management

Organizations Must Innovate

Successful organizations select, implement and optimize projects helping improve how they:

Run
Grow
Transform

Successfully identifying and completing these projects requires...

1: Project Management

We are project managers.

And our experience tells us that using project management methods alone is like juggling with one hand.

This is especially difficult for projects needing...

2: Information Technology (IT) Management

Our clients, like many organizations, need new systems to improve the way they deliver value.

However, the majority of IT projects fail, even when using Project and IT Management disciplines together.

So we use...

3: Change Management

Managing change means helping stakeholders adopt innovation.

Projects succeed by focusing on the process, product and people.

Projects ARE change.

This means...

4: Change is the Framework

We elevate Change Management as the driving discipline integrating Project and IT Management into a single, proven methodology.

Our software ProIntegrate™ supports this methodology throughout the project lifecycle.

See our integrated change management software, ProIntegrate™ or contact us for more information.

Innovating Health Care IT

The Perils of Prevention Primacy

By SRC / December 26, 2015

When prevention hardly works, establishing ineffective prevention protections, creating and running compliance-monitoring entities, and monitoring providers and payers are especially troubling. While we must punish cyber criminals, it is critical to focus our efforts on protecting and helping victims. This makes far more sense than continuing to pay exorbitant amounts

Innovating Health Care IT

The Total Impact of Theft

By SRC / December 18, 2015

So if the crooks already have our identities, why are we spending huge sums to “protect” what already vanished? Are we, like the proverbial farmer, locking the barn door after a thief stole our horse? Before answering these questions, we should examine some contributing factors. First, there is a general societal

Innovating Health Care IT

The Horse is Already Stolen

By SRC / December 11, 2015

When discussing health identity protection, one of the first things that comes to mind is the old proverb reminding us we are foolish to lock the barn door to safeguard a stolen horse. The damage is already done; now we need to focus on recovering the horse. Of course, when

Innovating Health Care IT

Folding in the Internet of Things (IOT)

By SRC / December 2, 2015

Technology innovation doubtlessly enables us to provide more data, in real time, at the point of clinical decision-making. Until now, most of this innovation is “internal” HIT and its associated data created in our care delivery organizations, like lab test results, imaging studies or written impressions of a physician’s clinical

Innovating Health Care IT

The Parable of the Broken Window

By SRC / November 25, 2015

Despite our best efforts to the contrary, we all know, expect and often dread unintended consequences associated with Health Information Technology (HIT). The French economist Frédéric Bastiat offers a classic example of our experience with these consequences in his “broken window” parable that goes like this: A shopkeeper's son accidentally breaks

Innovating Health Care IT

How Can Outsiders Help?

By SRC / November 18, 2015

What are some key health care benefits we can reap from diverse expert and outsider HIT team membership? To begin with, widening the diversity of HIT team membership helps to overcome Not Invented Here (NIH) syndrome. Outsider team members successfully contributing fresh solutions erode the NIH prejudice favoring “our own”

Innovating Health Care IT

Does True Innovation Require Domain Expertise?

By SRC / November 11, 2015

It is a common belief that true innovation requires domain expertise. Malcolm Gladwell, the author of Outliers: The Story of Success, says it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become expert in any given domain. He indicates that the process of becoming an expert produces truly exceptional people and ideas.

Innovating Health Care IT

The Blind Men and the Elephant

By SRC / November 4, 2015

Most of you are familiar with the “blind men and the elephant” parable. Jainism, one of the world’s oldest religions, is often credited as its originator. In the Jain version, six blind men describe an elephant by touching its different body parts. One man touches a leg, a second a

Innovating Health Care IT

Change is Growth is Change

By admin / January 7, 2015

Are there examples of the fixed and growth mindsets operating in our industry? While there is no hard data as yet, we believe they exist. Take the “close out” or “lessons learned” report prepared at the end of a key project phase and at project completion. In our experience, a

Innovating Health Care IT

Mapping the Mind Field

By admin / January 1, 2015

In his blog, psychologist Wayne Dyer relates a story of “mind fields” entitled An Airport Parable. [1. Dyer, Wayne W. An Airport Parable. Dr. Wayne W. Dyer (blog post). Retrieved on January 22, 2015 from http://www.drwaynedyer.com/blog/an-airport-parable/] The story describes one of those "airline flights from hell." In short, Dr. Dyer

Innovating Health Care IT

Embracing Our Vulnerability

By admin / October 7, 2014

In the same way healthcare systems demonstrate increasingly rapid evolution, we’ve seen similar impressive changes in HIT. Twenty years ago, few had even heard of an EHR. Today you would be hard pressed to find a healthcare worker who has never heard the term. Yet technology change of any magnitude

Innovating Health Care IT

Rethinking The Abilene Paradox

By admin / October 1, 2014

Forty years ago, management literature referred to a story demonstrating how organizations “frequently take actions in contradiction to what they really want to do and therefore defeat the very purposes they are trying to achieve.” That story is now known as the “Abilene Paradox.” The story describes a Texas family who

Innovating Health Care IT

Revise the Roles (and Rules)

By admin / July 7, 2014

Common sense and our own experience tell us to also look at the velocity of current changes brought about by required compliance with Meaningful Use and other standards. In any industry, the sheer volume of change would be overwhelming – some level of resistance is a natural response. As we

Innovating Health Care IT

Beyond the Demographics Demon

By admin / July 1, 2014

In a research paper presented at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 2013 46th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, [1. Bhattacherjee, Anol; Davis, Christopher; Hikmet, Neset, "Physician Reactions to Healthcare IT: An Activity-Theoretic Analysis," System Sciences (HICSS), 2013 46th Hawaii International Conference on, vol., no., pp.2545,2554, 7-10

Innovating Health Care IT

Applying Full Contact Care

By admin / October 12, 2013

Many patient engagement projects in the U.S. rely on the design and use of HIT tools and resources. Patient portals, personal health records, on-line patient education are a few examples of these HIT tools. Future efforts, at least for the near term, are very likely to continue seeking to leverage

Innovating Health Care IT

Clarifying Patient Engagement

By admin / October 5, 2013

“Patient engagement is the blockbuster drug of the century” [1. Kish, Leonard, ‘The Blockbuster Drug of the Century: An Engaged Patient,’ HL7 Health Standards blog, August 28, 2012, retrieved on June 25, 2013 from: http://www.hl7standards.com/blog/2012/08/28/drug-of-the-century/] ...or so asserts Health Information Technology (HIT) futurist Leonard Kish. But like many transformational themes in healthcare, we

Innovating Health Care IT

Building a Data-Savvy Workforce

By admin / April 12, 2013

One interesting and possibly new finding from this assessment is that employers believe there is a growing need for deep skills and understanding related to working effectively with data. The authors commented: “...A difference was noted related to data management, data mining, data analytic, and similar skills and competencies. Twenty-six

Innovating Health Care IT

Navigating Big Data

By admin / April 5, 2013

Those of us in health care imagine large quantities of useful, easily accessible, accurate and meaningful data at our fingertips, helping us improve the way we provide individual patient care while reducing costs and advancing health care systemically. Unfortunately, while this is where we want to be “when health care

Innovating Health Care IT

A Tale of Four Cultures

By admin / January 12, 2013

In an insightful essay [1. Friedman, C. P. (1999). Information technology leadership in academic medical centers: A tale of four cultures. Academic Medicine : Journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges, 74(7), 795-9] Chuck Friedman, a physicist and educator, described his growing interest in the “soft side” of informatics.

Innovating Health Care IT

The Culture of HIT Implementation

By admin / January 5, 2013

“An account of technology's frustrations can start anywhere, but sooner or later it leads to medicine.” – Edward Tenner In his book, Why Things Bite Back, Edward Tenner thoughtfully articulates what he calls the “revenge effects” – the unintended consequences that so often arise as we continue our relentless Information Technology