Digitalization process
Vision/ Goal
In terms of digital transformation, public hospitals follow the
recommendations of the Ministry of Health (MoH). For private hospitals HIMMS
certification is not the major focus.
Public: ”We entered the digitalization path by recommendation of the Ministry of Health.” (Pubhosp7)
Private: “Private Hospitals are turning into digitalization
depending on their own decisions, there is no direction from the
Ministry of Health.” (Prvhosp6)
The process for digitalization of healthcare services is started by
forming a team led by the Chief Physician or someone from Quality or
IT.
Public : “We started the process by forming committees under the
leadership of the chief physician with the recommendation of the
Provincial Health Directorate” (Pubhosp1)
Private: “Our hospital management acknowledge the importance of
this and follows current developments in the digitalization area. We
have established a separate office that deals with the digitalization
process.” (Prvhosp1)
Training / Adaptation
In terms of training programs and adaptation of digitalization of
healthcare services, first, the units that were willing to adopt
digitalization quickly received the training programs, and over time
training programs were expanded to other departments. Resistance to
digitalization occurred among physicians who believe that they did not
need a system that tells them what to do. It took about 2 -3 months to
adopt the technology.
Public: “Every innovation brings resistance . Our busiest area is the emergency room. That’s why the adaptation took sometime in this unit but now no one
would agree to go back to the past. Everyone working in the unit is very satisfied.” (Pubhosp8)
Private: “We established an academy for these training programs
and it only dealt with this field. It provides in-house trainings. As in
every institution, there would be strong resistance in some units, but
everyone who adapted the system was satisfied now” (Prvhosp5)
Implementation /Expansion
With respect to implementation & expansion, in the past the level 6
HIMMS certification required only one unit to be digitalized but now it requires 50% digitalization of the hospital. The
HIMMS level 7 certification requires about 100 % digitalization of the
hospital along with the case presentations.
Public: “We started digitalization process with a single unit
and continued to expand it to the entire hospital. Pharmacy was the most
important part of digitalization. Therefore, we first established the
closed loop medicine system to easily track the stock of medicines and
minimize the errors.” (Pubhosp5).
Private: “Investment in digitalization process was the corporate
strategy and required significant investment. In our hospital
digitalization started in the busy unit so that we could get fast
results” (Prvhosp8)