One of our newest clients in the UK is the Blackburn with Darwen NHS PCT/Borough Council partnership. These two organisations are an excellent example of a healthcare transformation effort, representing two parallel initiatives that are focused on both transforming healthcare services commissioning and planning and healthcare services delivery.
In one of our conversations, our client noted that, “This is not just about structures and processes. This is really a cultural change as well.”
How true! Healthcare transformation cannot be successful on a sustained basis without attention paid to the human-side of transforming healthcare services. This requires an investment of time and resources in healthcare change management such as generating durable Sponsorship and pro-actively planning for and managing healthcare resistance to change.
Why Expect Healthcare Resistance to Change?
It doesn’t matter if a healthcare change is logical or intended to make things better through new healthcare IT like electronic medical records implementation- the fact is that any healthcare change is disruptive. And the disruption created by the enormity of healthcare transformation brings with it healthcare resistance to change. When you change the way that people do their jobs, it is a big deal, and of course changing processes and structures are fundamental to transforming healthcare services.
With the application of the Accelerating Implementation Methodology (AIM), we can actually identify prospectively the likely sources of healthcare resistance to change, and develop strategies and tactics for managing it. You can’t squash it, but you can learn how to use healthcare resistance to change to your own advantage in driving healthcare transformation.
If you don’t deal with healthcare resistance to change, your healthcare transformation efforts will slow down, and perhaps even fail. As we tell our clients, you can invest in dealing with healthcare resistance to change now, or pay for it later.Labels: healthcare resistance to change, Transforming healthcare, transforming healthcare services