Multi-hospital Technical Infrastructure Integration

A large academic medical center in the Pacific Northwest undertook a program to integrate and operate multiple facilities under one hospital license pursuant to Medicare provider-based rules, i.e., one hospital with two campuses. One of the primary objectives was to create an infrastructure to realize $10M performance improvements annually at the remote facility. OTB was asked to manage the technology infrastructure changes required to make this happen.

The Challenge

This Integration project had 10 workstreams, each working on a different aspect of the integration effort. The academic medical center’s Information Technology group has many priority projects in the works and was short on project management resources. They needed to hire someone with significant large project management and leadership skills quickly to get the technical infrastructure activities on track and drive them toward the critical integration deadline.

What Was At Stake

The Information Technology group controlled only one part of a much larger program and had no room to slip their schedule. This effort crossed many silos of the organization so there was not a simple answer as to who was on point for completing activities involving networks, PC, customer support, application provisioning, SharePoint/Intranet governance, and other IT aspects of the Integration.

The Solution

One of OTB’s senior project managers was hired to guide the integration efforts to completion. OTB’s Project Manager:

Established strong relationships with senior leadership and key executives to improve the confidence in the delivery of technical infrastructure components.
Gathered a team of experts from around the organization to develop solution options to a variety of technical issues that had been raised.
Developed a workplan that was reasonable and workable for all parties involved.
Communicated status and issues clearly and concisely to all levels of the program structure.
Worked to control scope to the necessary requirements and not let the team get distracted by a significant number of attempts to increase scope.
Used analytical skills to dig deep into issues and help find workable solutions.

Results

In the end, OTB took the Technical Infrastructure workstream of the integration program from a “red” status to “all green” within 60 days. All infrastructure changes were made well in advance of the integration go-live.