This blog is totally independent, unpaid and has only three major objectives.
The first is to inform readers of news and happenings in the e-Health domain, both here in Australia and world-wide.
The second is to provide commentary on e-Health in Australia and to foster improvement where I can.
The third is to encourage discussion of the matters raised in the blog so hopefully readers can get a balanced view of what is really happening and what successes are being achieved.
The question was:
How Well Do You Think E-Health Will Go in Australia in 2011?
The answers were as follows:
Fabulously
- 4 (8%)
Pretty Well
- 7 (14%)
Just Mooch Along
- 6 (12%)
Not Much Will Be Achieved
- 20 (40%)
It Will Be Just Awful
- 12 (24%)
Votes: 49
First it is sad so few had a nice long holiday based on the vote numbers and second I guess optimism about 2011 and e-Health is a bit thin on the ground. I can sympathise with that!
Again, many thanks to those that voted!
David.
A 64% negative response is a bit higher than I would have expected but not entirely unexpected. Our experience of change management suggests there are a small number of early adaptors, a large number of fence sitters and a small number of active detractors.
ReplyDeleteThe fence sitters will not move until it is safe for them to do so - the consider the early adaptors to be expendable and someone to blame if it all goes pear shaped. The detractors will not move until their position becomes untenable.
History has shown the majority of people will resist change even after events have shown it was better to change. Look around at the number of people that remain working in sectors that are doomed rather than retrain and start again, they will stay until they are made redundant.
Of course, creating a crisis to force people to change is never a good strategy; a better one is to make it safe for people to change. Understand their fears and work to either replace those fears with facts or design a safe pathway to transition to something new.
Wholesale change rarely works without significant upheaval. The key is for managers at all levels to work with each individual on their group, to create a safe passage and move people along - one by one. Remember also, that for every person that changes voluntarily, they will influence two or three friends to follow them.
Hi John,
ReplyDeleteIt is important to remember the readers here are typically the technically savvy e-Health protagonists who I read as saying they have no confidence in the present leadership and governance of Australian e-Health to actually see real change happen!
My feeling is that the readers here would really like to be optimistic but that they are also realists!
David.
Yes, the progress of ehealth in 2011 is about leadership (or lack of it), not resistance to change. I think our general practice is typical of many. Our doctors all applied for and received individual PKI certicates which they have never used. Although we have two secure email systems installed we can reach only a fraction of specialists, so the bulk of referrals and letters are on paper. As a result our staff spend far too much time opening letters and scanning them into the clinical system. We don't use e-prescribing because it doesn't actually replace anything, and again there are two systems which still don't reach all pharmacies. We receive path and radiology reports electronically through seven different clients and in about five different formats. We print the requests. When patients change practices we exchange patient records electronically whenever possible, but usually by writing the record to a CDROM because we can't email it securely. The fallback, which we often resort to, is to print it and post it. But we would change all these things overnight if we had a standard set of tools and services. It's NOT about resistance to change.
ReplyDeleteHi David fair comment, I must point out that my comment on the change process was in response to the survey feedback rather than an specifics on the introduction of e-health. While I accept that leadership may not be present, my comment and my interest is not so much with the progress of introducing e-health; more with the process of transition people through change.
ReplyDelete