The ReadySet Review January 2025: Why Are So Many Software Implementations Going Wrong?

Headline: 4 Keys To A Successful EHR Install

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Original Source: Becker’s Hospital Review (https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/ehrs/13-keys-to-a-successful-ehr-install.html?origin=CIOE)

Healthcare leaders aren’t happy with the state of software implementation right now. According to KLAS Research, satisfaction with EHR implementations in particular has declined significantly in recent years. In a poll of 352 hospital leaders conducted from 2022 through 2024, only 38% of respondents said their implementation “hit the mark.” Simply “hitting the mark” shouldn’t be this hard.

We think there are several reasons for this:

A lack of clear appetite for change

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Change is hard, but change is necessary and unavoidable. New technology and process adoption are critical in the current healthcare climate, where margins have been squeezed tightly since the pandemic.

Our CEO Kevin von Keyserling says it best – hospitals are practicing 21st-century medicine with 14th-century infrastructure.

In other words – it’s time for many hospital processes to evolve for the better. Those in the sterile processing department and supply chain are among the most in need of a facelift, not just for the sake of the hospital’s bottom line, but also for the good of patient care. At the heart of it all, better patient care is what hospitals are trying to deliver every day!

Take loaner tray management in the SPD, for example. A “traditional” loaner management process involves notifying a device vendor of a case and the start time manually with frantic emails and phone calls. SPD managers spend several hours every day trying to figure out where the loaner trays are for the next case. This leads to several problems for both the hospital and the vendor:

• The SPD staff has no visibility into what’s coming and when.
• If a vendor shows up late, chances are the case will be delayed or canceled.
• Vendors can’t track the status of cases in real-time. That means a vendor can drive several hours to drop off his trays and not know that the case was delayed or canceled until he arrives at the hospital.

ReadySet’s loaner management software has transformed this process for over 100 leading hospitals around the country. It’s through our comprehensive implementations, integrations with all your software systems, not just some, and the real-time visibility that our platform provides that we’re able to notify vendors of a case an average of 20 days in advance – all within the ReadySet app.

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A reliance on long-standing processes

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, goes the saying – but that creates serious problems over time.

Hospital staff get tired of encountering the same problems every day. That leads to burnout. Without any positive change in sight, hospital staff say, “I’ve had enough” and leave the hospital. Patients don’t receive the level of care they deserve. Bad things happen.

We just talked about burnout in our last issue...

?And we totally understand why there’s a reluctance to change processes that might have worked “well enough” for decades. So much time and so many people are involved in change management that often the upfront investment to onboard a new software system or change a process seems simply too big to justify. If it works now, and it’s not costing us too much, it must be good enough forever.

But that decision has consequences that affect the hospital in more ways than one, often invisibly. And this attitude trickles down into software implementations.

We believe that it’s not enough simply to install a software solution without fundamentally reshaping the processes that the technology supports and the roles of the people involved. People and processes should matter just as much to the hospital as the technologies they use. It isn’t possible to fix a broken process simply by throwing a software solution at it. The function, roles involved, and expectations of the underlying process need to be entirely re-examined for any software solution to be truly effective and generate a great return on investment.

There’s no group of people in healthcare that can appreciate this more than those who have experienced a lackluster software implementation.

A lack of communication between hospital, vendor, and implementation teams

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Implementation of any software solution is a big task. It requires alignment from multiple departments within the hospital and regular communication between the vendor and the hospital’s project teams to make the transition smoothly.

?That alignment and communication is difficult to get right. Each stakeholder often has different timelines and expectations for a software implementation, as well as varying amounts of free resources.

?The solution? Get everyone involved in the project early on in the sales process, both from the hospital side and the vendor side. Set expectations for change with realistic deadlines. Communication is how alignment is acquired.

?That’s why our sales and implementation teams are among the best in the business. Our clients love that we guide the implementation process from final signature to product delivery, keeping everyone involved up to speed, from supply chain to SPD to OEM.

?The ReadySet team’s expertise stems from our background. We’re made up of veterans from healthcare and technology, not just one or the other. We understand your issues better because:

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• Our implementation teams have spent thousands of hours in the SPD collectively, working as technicians and managers. We understand your struggles in the SPD because we’ve been there countless times ourselves.
• Our product team has worked for years at the top of the healthcare supply chain. We understand the state of play better than anyone because we’ve seen at the highest and lowest levels how people, processes, and the technology that empowers them fit together in today’s healthcare world – and how to redesign them to work better for tomorrow.
• Our engineering team is world-class. It’s made up of FAANG-level engineering talent. Why choose us instead of the Googles of the world? They’re all dedicated to making a difference in healthcare and improving the lives of patients through cutting-edge technology built from the ground up to solve your department’s problems, not the top down.
• Our sales and partnerships teams are experts at translating our vision for the future of the healthcare supply chain into action. We emphasize to our clients that every department in the healthcare supply chain is a part of the solution, and processes are the cause of your department’s problems – not any group of people. Everyone – from the device vendors to the SPD to supply chain - is equally important in our vision for the future of the healthcare supply chain.

That’s how we empower hospitals to Operate in Harmony – because when everyone is involved, treated like an equally important piece of the puzzle, and backed by industry-leading talent in every functional area of our business, it’s a win-win for the entire supply chain. We can automate manual processes, ensure real-time visibility, and empower data-driven conversations that work better for everyone and let us focus on what matters: patient care.

Want to learn more about ReadySet? Visit our website at readysetsurgical.com.