Hit or Miss : Lessons Learned from Health Information Technology Projects

This third edition presents and dissects a wide variety of HIT failures so that the reader can understand in each case what went wrong and why and how to avoid such problems, without focusing on the involvement of specific people, organizations, or vendors. The lessons may be applied to future and existing projects, or used to understand why a previous project failed. The reader also learns how common causes of failure affect different kinds of HIT projects and with different results.

Cases are organized by the type of focus (hospital care, ambulatory care, and community). Each case provides analysis by an author who was involved in the project plus the insight of an HIT expert. This book presents a model to discuss HIT failures in a safe and protected manner, providing an opportunity to focus on the lessons offered by a failed initiative as opposed to worrying about potential retribution for exposing a project as having failed. Access expert insight into key obstacles that must be overcome to leverage IT and transform healthcare.

Each de-identified case study includes an analysis by a group of industry experts along with a counter analysis. Cases include a list of key words and are categorized by project (e.g. CPOE, business intelligence). Each case study concludes with a lesson learned section. Thought provoking commentary chapters add additional context to the challenges faced during HIT projects, from social and organizational to legal and contractual.

Executive Editor – Jonathan Leviss MD, FACPDr. Leviss has over 20 years of experience championing change and improvement across the health care industry at academic and community-based health systems, start-up businesses, not-for-profit organizations, and Fortune 100 companies and consulting firms. Recently he was appointed Medical Director for Clinical Innovation at Harbor Health Services, Inc., where he leads informatics-based programs for population health, value-based care, and overall organizational improvement across four community health centers, two PACE programs, and a Medicaid ACO. Prior roles include serving as the CMO at start-up companies, a state-wide HIE, and the first CMIO at NYC Health + HITECH. Dr. Leviss is a practicing primary care internist at Harbor Health Services, Inc. He has held faculty appointments at NYU, Columbia University, and currently has a faculty appointment at the Brown University School of Public Health. He is board certified in internal medicine (ABIM) and the subspecialty of clinical informatics (ABPM).