For decades, many hospitals and health systems have taken a siloed approach to digitizing their documents, causing an unforeseen fracturing of data that can impede value-based care initiatives. The more innovative institutions are now seeking out document management and imaging (DMI) systems to help bring structure to their content ecosystems.

Selecting and implementing a DMI platform can be a demanding process. Proper planning in the early exploratory phases is not only critical to implementation of the software, but long-term use and acceptance as well. During this time, organizations should initiate planning by focusing on who within the enterprise should be involved in the project and who is best suited to lead the initiative.

There are a wide variety of job functions and stakeholders in today’s healthcare organizations, each offering unique interests and concerns. This can make the process of assembling a DMI acquisition team challenging. To help simplify this effort, consider structuring your stakeholders into 3 groups/roles: executive patron, coordinator, and influencing stakeholders.

• Executive Patron: The individual responsible for leading the development of the business case and commanding purchasing decisions.

• Coordinator: A person serving in a hybrid role of project manager and implementation manager, providing oversight of the software selection process.

• Influencing Stakeholders: A diverse assembly of representatives from the departments most affected by a DMI system, including clinical, health informatics, IT, operations, legal, compliance, risk management, finance, and human resources.

By organizing your DMI acquisition team in this way, you can establish structure and a clear line of leadership. Additionally, this framework can potentially improve the speed of decision-making, efficiency of implementation, and overall success of software selection.

To learn more about preparing your organization for enterprise content management and the adoption of a DMI platform, download our white paper, “Leading enterprise content strategy with health information management: An executive guide for acquiring a document management and imaging platform.”