GETTING THE MOST OUT OF YOUR MEDITECH APPLICATION
By Allen Kirkpatrick
Now that you have lived through your implementation Go-Live and stabilized the system for about 6-9 months,
it is time to perform an Operational Assessment. The purpose of the operational assessment is to provide your
organization with recommendations to optimize your use of the MEDITECH tools that are available in each of the
applications. The assessment will also provide a review of the critical dictionaries and parameters. This will
enable the staff to review how the MEDITECH applications were defined and provide a chance to make necessary
improvements. A review of the critical dictionaries and parameters at this time is a great benefit because many
users have now gained a familiarity with how their application is used, as well as, its integration to other
applications within the MEDITECH system. This type of assessment will allow your Application Leaders to validate
your health care organization’s processes and structure and improve upon the foundation work.
Identifying areas of improvement can be accomplished by bringing a subject matter expert (SME) into your team
to analyze the system. There are several recommended phases which should occur during the Operational Assessment:
- Interviews with End Users
- Validation of application structure
- Review of current process
- Review of Training Program
- Items which were postponed at time of implementation.
During these phases the organization’s HCIS structure and processes will be documented and mapped to
functionality along with any identified areas of improvement. The combined effort of these steps will provide
the organization with a detailed finding of whether or not the application is working as designed and what areas
need enhancement. Once all these items have been reviewed and best practice approaches considered the
organization can look at the compiled list of future functionality analysis and determine a project plan for
future design.
Oftentimes, when an organization first implements new applications, the lack of familiarity with those
applications results in providing baseline functionality to the user community. Consequently, once live, time
spent with the application gives rise to many opportunities to better institute system changes, or process
modifications to deliver more optimal results that are better tailored to the unique characteristics of the
organization. An Operational Assessment combines this newfound familiarity and perspective among the user
community and IT, with the best practices experience and national perspective that Vitalize has amassed through
our Meditech implementation efforts with healthcare organizations across the country.
If you would like to discuss the OA further or speak with a Vitalize representative on other system
improvement initiatives, please contact our office at 610-444-1233 or visit our website
www.getvitalized.com