www.I’mRight.com

If you have worked within a consulting role and have led organizational change, when you seek out to learn something new to ultimately teach or guide your client through understanding it, how do you obtain your information?  I have noticed that it is very easy to fall into the trap of simply researching something until we obtain the outcome or feedback we WANT to hear, rather than obtaining quality information to validate the scientific approach we have taken to derive our original hypothesis.  

Some project managers may argue that this may not be a topic contained within our normal tool bag and I would tend to agree, unless you plan to operate as a project management consultant that helps lead organizational change.  Currently that is the capacity that I operate in, and as I read more and more medical journals, studies, reports, dissect tables, charts, and graphs full of statistical information it is very noticeable the data values are not properly developed.

As I make my way through these documents, I find myself recalling a class I had when in school for my BA degree.  The specific class was management science, and to this day is one of the most influential classes I had.  The basic premise of the class was to introduce proper methodology for developing a process to define a problem, design a method to analyze the data, and then know how to view the findings to then make an informed decision.  

The first step seems relatively easy but the remaining two steps proved to be the most difficult.  Consider an example of something that I have recently faced:

In order to implement a specific operational structure, a family practice or health system asked what it would cost to undertake this effort outside of the direct costs paid to our company to help facilitate this effort.  Essentially asking the question, what is the cost of ownership?  The question had been derived, but the problem wasn’t answering it, the problem was to determine how to answer it.  The problem isn’t simply, “how much indirect cost will be incurred for a practice to implement a specific organizational structure change” because that would mean that the indirect cost incursion is static across all types of practices.  

The consideration needs to consider practice size, number of providers, panel composition, socioeconomic status of panel, number of support staff, and IT capabilities just to name a few.  People who have studied economics understand the basic principle of economies of scale.  Knowing that there are nuances to cost incursion based upon the scale at which services or products are produced or consumed.  This is no different in healthcare, as the support staff and providers are able to handle different ranges of capacity for specific demographics of patients.  Once the demand scales up to the next range, and implementation of a larger work force is created, capacity is then not set at that particular level, yet it is possible to increase even higher with the same amount of resources.

Another consideration may be the buying power or cost advantage of purchasing medical supplies and a host of other considerations that could affect the overall cost of providing the same service as a much smaller organization.  Note also that the study should include different types of practices to gain an understanding of the costs experienced in all types of settings. If data is collected considering all the classifications and categories that relate to practices, the results can then be presented in a way that makes them searchable across the fields considered.  

Having project managed in several different fields, I have noticed that each field fails to notice what it could learn from another.  Not a conscious error, but something that is missed as I have watched each industry.  The main issue I have encountered thus far in my current effort is that the desire is to create a systematic tool of measurement that can be applied to all entities rather than developing criteria specific measurements.  

As illustrated in this post, it is necessary to consider all of the nuances that make each entity different.  When they are considered, measured properly, and are applied accurately the view into the information could be extremely influential.  There isn’t one source for all the answers; “I’mRight.com” doesn’t exist just yet :-)

Chris Thompson PMP, SSYB