Cutting Edge Issues

eHealth:
Towards A New World of Communications in Medicine

Case Study: Overlake Hospital Medical Center

Information on Demand: Consumer-Controlled Medical Records

Finding Leaders for Internet Health Care

Building the Security-Capable Enterprise

Planning Business Strategies with Internet Support

Internet Use as a Survival Strategy

Case Study Zone

Who is eMed?

Planning Business Strategies with Internet Support

Internet strategies should support the core needs of the enterprise.

By David Pryor, MD

Everyone is now eager to create an Internet strategy. In reality, however, there are no Internet strategies. There are business strategies that are enabled by the Internet. There is nothing so sad as a great technology whose time has not come; it is best to avoid this effect by ensuring that Internet strategies enable specific business objectives and care competencies of the organization. From a business-strategy perspective, core competencies should be considered. Around these, a series of processes that interact with customers are defined; these can then be improved using Internet technology.

There are also questions to be asked in the course of this consideration. Once the strategy has been clarified, how should it be implemented? Should the necessary support for this implementation be created within the enterprise, outsourced, or acquired through partnership with another business? Beginning to use the Internet within an organization involves ascending a learning curve, so it may be necessary to begin a project before all of the information that it would be ideal to have is in place.

The most important issue, as an organization attempts to develop its strategy, may be culture. As the adage goes, “Culture eats strategy for lunch.” If there is a struggle involved in implementing an Internet strategy within an organization, the struggle may not be with the strategy itself. Instead, it may be with the culture. If the culture is ignored, the strategy is unlikely to be successful. In thinking about how to create change within individual organizations, it is important to recognize the impact of culture on one’s ability to be effective.

CREATING SUSTAINABLE CHANGE

The sustainability of any contempFlated change should be considered. It is sustainable change that will, over the long term, translate into improved outcomes and reduced costs of care. The first step toward sustainable change is a thorough understanding of the state of health care today.

There is tremendous variability in health care. Physicians sometimes think that variability in health care helps to preserve their ability to deliver the best care to an individual patient. In any other business, however, variability is seen as meaning poorer quality and higher costs. The same thing is actually true in health care. Today’s health care is not generally managed for quality or cost.