CernerWorks, The "why" behind Change Management

I drafted this blog post on behalf of the Sr. Vice President of Cerner's remote hosting organization. Many employees voiced dismay at needing to follow seemingly tedious procedures. The purpose of this blog post was to provide transparency to the importance and necessity of having and following these procedures.

Posted Mar 30, 2015

At the start of 2015, we’ve had a noticeable emphasis on our Enterprise Change Management policy. You’ve heard this topic repeated frequently in your community meetings, through email and from your managers and executives.

But, let’s take a step back and outline the importance of having and following our client system change management procedures. While it is your responsibility to understand our policies, procedures and tools, it’s our responsibility as leaders to make sure you understand the why behind it all.

So WHY do we have an enterprise change management policy? Simply put, it’s to protect our clients, protect Cerner and protect you, our associates.

The systems that we manage, monitor and work on day-in, day-out are used to provide quality health care and contain live patient data. There are people and lives at the other end of our systems. We must safeguard the security, validity and privacy of this data, and our clients expect to be able to access it when needed.

Our change management policy ensures we take necessary steps to validate that the changes we’re making will not compromise this data or make a client’s system unavailable where they cannot access what they need.

In addition, the required approvals and change advisory board reviews help to identify and mitigate any potential risks or previous issues with a similar change. Clinicians expect their systems to be available and functioning normally at all times, and our policy helps reduce the risk of unplanned downtime and incidents. Avoiding incidents benefits our clients – and you and your teams.

While there are several steps in our change management policy, each has been put in place to address the above “why” reasons. We do need to pass audits so that our clients trust us to manage their systems appropriately, but always remember the type of data and systems that we’re responsible for.

Yes, we are looking for ways to continue to simplify our policies and procedures and to make sure our tools are helpful. We have templates and job aids available that ensure we address each required area. They also make it faster and simpler for you to complete a CR. 

As I mentioned previously, each group has at least one change champion. These associates understand the work and change that you are performing, they are trained and willing to help you with all of this so go to them and ask them questions!

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