A Journey in Project Management of an Enterprise Clinical RTLS Program

1. A Journey in Project Management ofan Enterprise Clinical RTLS Program Kimberly Brayley Director, RTLS Project Management Office Veterans Health Administration

2. Areas of Concentration • Defining your Project • Schedules and Tasks • Resourcing • Communication & Education • Tracking Progress • Risks, Issues, and Lessons Learned • Measuring Success

3. Hospital System to Health System In 1996, VA began the creation of Veterans Integrated Service Networks (VISNs) to transform VA Health Care from a “Hospital System” to a “Health System.” VHA currently has 21 VISNs: • 152Medical Centers • 974Outpatient Clinics • 807Community-Based • 152Hospital-Based • 9Mobile • 6 Independent • 288Vet Centers • 98Domiciliary Residential Rehab Programs • 133 Community Living Centers

4. VA RTLS Primary Objectives • Deploy the set of nationally standardized RTLS solutions to: • VHA Medical Centers, Clinics, non-patient care locations • That will: • Improve operational efficiency and the quality of Veteran care • Decrease operational costs • Maximize equipment utilization • Increase efficiencies and staff productivity • Reduce delays and improve patient care • Minimize lost and misplaced items • Improve customer and staff satisfaction • Improve the quality and safety of service from patient, physician, and institution perspectives

5. VA RTLS Primary Objectives (cont.) • Establish a capability that is compatible and interoperable with existing information systems internal and external to VA • Ensuring integration, scalability and ease of sustainment across technologies • Provide medical centers and other VA facilities with the real-time capability to actively track: • Selected assets, significant medical supplies, staff, patients, and environmental conditions (e.g., temperature and humidity) through a common interface and reporting tool • Deploy a single instance of a NDR solution for: • Aggregation and in-depth analysis of data from individual “front-end” RTLS instances: National Data Repository (NDR)

6. RTLS Program Approach Implement Change Management Review Prior Investments Procure and Install Design Plan • Provide solution on a National Contract • Implement comprehensive, sustainable and repeatable system and user training • Controlled deployment in VA facilities for system and applications / use cases. • Determine sequential dependencies between requirements and procurements • Identify and apply critical success factors • Standardize procurement strategies and outcomes • Ensure active involvement of leadership and staff for adopting use of technology • Sustain communication and education • Ensure programmatic and business concerns are addressed • Continue to grow uses for technology • Assess requirements • Study lessons learned • Document programmatic information • Assess process flows • Identify outcomes and ROI • Determine needs for hardware and software

7. Defining your Complex Project National PMO National Workgroups Contractor Subs Leadership Clinical Departments Support Services Patients & Staff

8. Defining your Complex Project (cont.)

9. Schedules and Tasks • What tasks go into a Project Plan? • Your Tasks • Workgroups • Committees – not in project • Named resources • Contractor Tasks • Subcontractors • Who manages the schedule? How often do you review it? • What is the real time to complete a task? • Milestones -Impacts for not meeting dates? • Other Projects and Issues impacting your schedule • Joint Commission • Construction Schedules • Budget Cycles • Vacations, Holidays, Shift work, Patient Care Areas

10. Schedules and Tasks: RTLS PMO Integrated Master Schedule (IMS) • Developed an RTLS IMS, integrating all project schedules into a single high-level source view: • RTLS Procurements • RTLS Deployments • RTLS Associated Projects • RTLS National Application Workgroups • RTLS PMO

11. Schedules and Tasks:30/60-Day Outlook Report • Developed and provide a monthly 30/60-Day Outlook Report at the beginning of each month of the entire RTLS program

12. Resources • Roles and Responsibilities • Can you name all the players on your team? • Who’s on First, What’s on Second? Exactly… • Do you have more than 1 SME in an area? • Don’t task yourself • Is everyone on the right bus and in the right seat?

13. Communication and Education Communication • Email Groups • SharePoint's • Messaging • Internal PR Plan • Newsletters Education • Seeing and Understanding • Change management • Frequent • Tiered levels for audience • Lunch and Learns The task of a leader is to get his people from where they are… to where they have not been - Henry Kissinger

14. Tracking Progress • Action Item List • Deliverables • Paying Bills Timely • Performance Requirements • Reviews with Contractor • Internal Gate Reviews

15. Tracking Progress: RTLS Manager Dashboard Developed a Pilot RTLS Dashboard for VISN Managers: • Serves as an overarching and holistic tool for each VISN TO, through aggregation of preexisting data sources • Budget (Schedule B, Invoices) • Schedule (Project Schedule) • Resources (onboarding, Training)

16. Tracking Progress: Gate Reviews for Procurement

17. Tracking Progress: Gate Reviews for Applications

18. Workgroup Gate Review Deliverable Approval Matrix

19. Tracking Progress: Tools and Templates Tools and Templates • Do you have them? • Can others access? • Does it tell a story? • Is it helpful? • How often do you update it? • Managing your tasks vs the tasks managing you…

20. Risks, Issues, and Lessons Learned • Risks: • Will create a negative effect on your program • Must be mitigated • Issues: • Problems, situations, findings and decisions that arise during the program that you may need to take action on or document the outcome. • Lessons Learned: • Complexity provides for greatest usage • Understanding our mistakes, help us to not repeat them • Can you avoid same mistakes others have already made? Would you rather Fail Alone.. Or Succeed as a Team?

21. Measuring Success The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it is the same problem you had last year. - John Foster Dulles

22. Measuring Success (cont.) • Did you document your expected outcomes? • What story can you tell after you have completed your project? • Soft vs Hard Benefits… • Pre and Post measurements

23. Benefits Realization

24. What type of PM are you? • Leading or Managing • You manage things and lead people… • Problem Solving or Creating • Are you carrying around a fire extinguisher? • Partnering - not just hiring the help • Are we all on the same team? It's not easy… but it's worth it It's not easy… but it's worth it It's not easy… but it's worth it

25. IF IT’S NOT WORKING… “That's just stupid. We need to look at the right way to do things instead of the way we're doing them now.”