Health care organizations are often challenged to align existing processes with new technology and to move from a known current state to an unknown future state—change that can create gaps that may lead to serious safety, financial, and operational defects. This is especially true in software implementations, such as electronic health record and enterprise resource planning systems, which are IT-centric and often vendor-driven.

Gap-IT leverages the principles and tools of lean health care to bridge your operations to IT. This solutions-based approach compares your current state to your desired future state to identify potential barriers between the two and can be combined with 3P to define an unknown, improved future state if necessary.

How Gap-IT Works

Using the structured analysis of Gap-IT, health care organizations can look beyond technology as a tool to focus on the flow of people and information through their operations, enabling the organization to leverage technology for tangible benefits.

Workshop Overview

During workshops, participants conduct structured analyses of the organization’s people, processes, policies, and technology to identify gaps between the current state and the technology-enabled future state. This gap inventory is used to generate improvement ideas that can stabilize current work and design new processes for the future state through the lean tools of standard work, error-proofing, and measuring quality.

Introducing a daily management system also helps teams visualize process performance; practice basic problem-solving, shift-huddles, communication, and recognition; and escalate issues through pre-established program governance. With thoughtfully designed new processes and a supporting lean management system, employees are enabled to do quality work at go-live.