The Power of Strong Implementations: How HIT Vendors & Customers Can Lay A Foundation for Success

What You Should Know:

– Health systems are increasingly working to get the most out of their IT investments. Focusing on a strong implementation can have a huge impact. Analysis of KLAS data gathered from 2018–2022 suggests that the quality of implementations may be more important than the technology selected.

– The data primarily focuses on solutions that require complex, large-scale implementations (e.g., acute care EMRs, ERP solutions, patient accounting systems, and PACS solutions). This study is part of KLAS ’ new Landmark Insights initiative—aimed at helping health systems currently implementing an HIT solution determine whether their project is on track for success.

Understanding How HIT Vendors and Customers Can Lay a Foundation For Success

Each year, KLAS interviews thousands of healthcare professionals about the IT solutions and services their organizations use. KLAS ’ standard quantitative evaluation for healthcare software is composed of 16 numeric ratings questions and 4 yes/no questions, all weighted equally. Combined, the ratings for these questions make up the overall performance score, which is measured on a 100-point scale. The questions are organized into six customer experience pillars—culture, loyalty, operations, product, relationship, and value. This report draws on KLAS ’ standard data across a broad set of IT solutions to explain industry-wide trends around implementations and the subsequent customer experience.

Key insights and trends are listed and explained as follows:

1. High-Quality Implementation Is One of the Strongest Predictors of Market-Leading Performance: In 2022, 81% of Best in KLAS winners were also the highest rated in their market segment for quality of implementation; in market segments that require complex, enterprise-scale deployments, that number was 100%. This highlights the effects of a strong implementation on all other customer experience factors. Additionally, interviewed customers are unlikely to report high satisfaction with outcomes without an implementation rating of at least 7 out of 9. On the flip side, 85% of customers satisfied with outcomes report a good implementation.

2. Many Implementations Aren’t Making the Grade, and Success after a Poor Implementation Is Rare: 49% of interviewed individuals report that their implementation needed improvement (i.e., they rated its quality 7 or below on a 1–9 scale). Improving the customer experience overall is difficult after a poor initial implementation—among organizations that start out with a poor implementation and low satisfaction, 76% continue to struggle years after the implementation. This echoes a key finding from KLAS ’ Arch Collaborative (an initiative that directly measures end users ’ EMR experience): poor initial training can continue to negatively impact end users for up to six years.

3. Keys to a Successful Implementation—Best Practices for Vendors and Healthcare Organizations: Both HIT vendors and healthcare organizations have a role to play in driving successful IT implementations. One CIO described the need for collaboration between all parties: “An implementation is owned by all the groups involved. Projects are about ownership, attention, and commitment. Every leader needs to be at the table with a full understanding of the options. . . . We need to communicate in a clear and concise fashion. The client needs to truly understand what they are getting themselves into. The vendors need to be honest and forthright with their clients. We are paying a lot of money to get the system implemented correctly.”

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