Team Structure
By Kris Galezewski

Once the vendor selection process has been completed, contracts signed, the leadership team is faced with the dilemma of creating their team structure for the implementation process. Often, implementation teams are created for a specific application or in Cerner implementations, net. Although this approach may be effective for the stand alone system, integrated systems are more complex and require an integrated team structure as components of the various products often are shared and affect multiple disciplines.

Team Structure for Multiple Cerner Nets:
The team should include a physician champion. The function of this role would be to serve as a liaison between IT and clinical sectors, to provide advice and guidance regarding build, design, and the implementation, to work with physicians in order to obtain compliance and buy-in, address physician specific concerns, and to obtain expert knowledge of software capacities.

Create separate teams for the following solutions:

• Orders
• Medication Process
• Clinical Documentation
• Charges

Affected Solutions:

• FirstNet^®
• PowerChart^®
• PowerChart Office
• Surginet

Benefits:
The benefits of having separate teams include a decrease in duplication in design and build, greater integration among all solutions, consistency in design and build, development of expert knowledge of the build tools and troubleshooting, faster implementations, and a decrease in errors.

Testing:
All of the teams would test collectively and include the end-users in the process. This will result in a process verification and create super users.

The complexity of integrated healthcare systems requires an integrative approach when determining team structure. Understanding the integration points between products creates a strong internal build and design team. Consistency is seen across all products, duplication is minimized, and implementations are faster. Each team consists of experts who are knowledgeable about product functionality. This expert knowledge assists in troubleshooting issues. Creating a strong team structure is essential to successful implementations.