2019-08-10

Where are physicians in the Connect Care readiness playbooks?

Alberta Health Services (AHS) leaders have a major role to play in supporting staff and helping prepare for Connect Care’s launch. They, in turn, are supported with guidance, resources and facilitation by a Connect Care Readiness Team. This is a systematic process, tapping change management best practices and the accumulated experience of many organizations that have implemented large-scale clinical information systems. The steps, actions, tools and expected outcomes at each stage of preparation are detailed in a "Readiness Playbook", with sequential chapters covering what is needed for each Connect Care wave leading up to launch.

The Connect Care Readiness Playbook is rich with wisdom and pragmatism. However, the readiness needs of physician and non-physician staff have important differences. Physicians skimming the Playbook may find it hard to see themselves in the prescribed work, or find it hard to imagine how to translate tasks when they work in settings that are not staffed by AHS employees.

The AHS Chief Medical Information Office is mindful of such differences. Playbook-compatible readiness supports are adjusted to suit the different circumstances of different physician communities.

The Connect Care Readiness Playbook does contain a lot of physician-appropriate information and physician informaticians can better help their leaders when aware of readiness constructs. Physician leader considerations in the Playbook are marked with a physician tag. The CMIO team additionally summarizes Playbook deliverables for physicians, keyed to each chapter.

Physician reporting is also handled differently. The CMIO portfolio facilitates use of surveys that are disseminated directly to affected physician leaders.