You have made a guiding plan and your assessment team has been selected. Take one more preparatory step that will help you move deftly into the selection and execution phase of your physician tracking program. This step may seem simple but it is often the most time-consuming. You want the assessment team to discuss the overall priorities of the program and to agree, before even getting close to vendor selection, on the essential elements.

We recommend to our clients that this step happen before they get excited about a particular program so that the principles of what is required to be successful leads the thinking. It is surprising about how many different thoughts exist for some of these issues so it is wise to discuss them first and make criteria for selection:

• How will the data be housed and the implications especially if within a multi-hospital system
• Data security
• Access to the system – how and where users and managers will access the system and what type of access will they have?. While end-users need to input and navigate on the account level, will they also require report-writing/viewing capabilities? Will there be different access features for management?
• Access to the system beyond the department. Are there ancillaries or clinical areas that will require viewing or input capabilities? How will system reports be shared?
• If you have more than one hospital in your system, will you share access on all of the accounts? Are there reasons to have some limitations?
• Will the program be web-based or installed with the hospital’s technology architecture? How facile will this be for the end-users?
• If you currently have a rudimentary or old system, should the historical data be imported into the new system? What elements in that data are absolutely necessary to transfer? Would there be an objection to this data being transferred internally or with manual mechanisms if cost is prohibitive?
• What kind of data will be required for the system? Where will this data come from – this is especially important to discuss if you are initiating a new system but have multiple data pools within the organization.
• Will other departments/functions integrate in the future, i.e. will your call center share some functionality or require data feeds?

There also needs to be one person who is responsible for the system and is considered the “go-to” person for all first line issues. We recommend that this individual have enough technical abilities to generate reports and do basic system problem-solving but also be sensitive and aware of the needs/demands within physician relations.

Okay, once you have completed these three preliminary steps outlined in the four parts to this multi-post, you are ready to start comparing vendors and begin the selection process. Feel good about taking the time to do this preliminary planning for it will make the next steps toward execution all that much easier and your team will be more adroit in the selection process. Following these steps make it more likely that you will select a better fit between your organization’s needs and the system’s abilities.