What can “All-Star Season” tell us about our own processes and technology?

Every February, North America witnesses the culmination of "All-Star Season", where three major professional sports leagues - the NFL, NHL, and NBA - hold their celebratory events. This year, the NFL and NHL's festivities took place on the weekend of February 3rd, followed a few weekends later by the NBA's All-Star Game on February 18th.

However, these once-lauded events have seen a significant decline in both viewership and fan engagement. Compared to the early 2000s, NFL and NBA All-Star games have witnessed a staggering 60-70% drop in TV viewership, while the NHL has experienced a 50% decrease.

Despite commendable efforts to revamp the experience and attract fans and players the leagues seem to be struggling. The NBA and NHL have switched to formats where players choose teams instead of competing by conference. All three leagues have incorporated skills competitions and the NFL even replaced traditional football games with playground-style events.

While these efforts are commendable, the results speak for themselves: they haven't reignited fan interest. Watching the events, it's often evident that player engagement is also lacking. It’s hard to blame the players though. As someone who personally suffered a career ending injury in an accidental collision during football training camp, I empathize with the players not wanting to play a “meaningless” game and risk serious injury. One wrong pivot, mistimed step, or inopportune reach can result in an injury that costs the player millions of dollars.

While we have fond memories of past All-Star games, and the leagues continuously strive to update and improve the format, perhaps it's time to accept reality. All-Star games might be relics of a bygone era and it might be time to let go.

I’m reminded of a unique situation one of my clients faced years ago. My firm had worked across their entire revenue cycle and uncovered a significant challenge in their main hospital's emergency department (ED). The health system used a legacy Electronic Health Record (EHR) and had a physical layout incompatible with 21st century patient flows as the building was over a century old. They did the best they could in a challenging situation but staff constantly struggled to track patient registration status due to incompatibility between old systems and patients moving about the labyrinth of rooms in the ED. Additionally, juggling multiple systems hindered communication among registration staff, further compounding the issues. Unsurprisingly, the ED had a high rate of patients "leaving without being registered", leading to costly billing and payment problems.

The system was planning to purchase a new EHR but that migration was years away. Since the organization planned to buy a new EHR (which costs millions of dollars) they did not want to make additional costly investments in their current EHR to make it better suited for their unique ED. My consulting team's solution was a custom Registration Tracking System built using Microsoft Access. This simple yet robust program allowed registration staff to create de-identified encounters tied to unique tracking numbers for compliance reasons. Throughout the visit, they could use the system to document the status of the registration. We even implemented a chat interface with built-in Personal Health Information (PHI) removal to facilitate communication within the team without leaving the program.

The staff and management loved our Tracking System program and praised its effectiveness. The results were evident, with the "left without being registered" rate significantly improving.

Five years or so after we’d rolled off the project, I ran into one of the leaders from that ED. After catching up, the conversation fell back to that fateful ED Tracking System. She reiterated how much the team loved the Tracking System we created, how they continued using it for years, and how the staff even resisted using similar functionality in their brand new EHR. The new EHR had all the necessary registration tracking tools, but the team was so accustomed and attached to the Tracking System we’d built that they struggled to let it go.

Similar to leagues and fans clinging to All-Star games, our client was stuck in the past. While it was flattering that they loved our program so much, it was time to move on and embrace the improved functionality of their new modern EHR.

Whether in business, healthcare, sports, or even personal life, we often find ourselves doing things simply because "it's the way we've always done it." However, it's crucial to remember this bias when making decisions and actively seek better solutions. There's almost always another way, an alternative that might be significantly better. And, whether as small as an Access database program or as big as a multi-million dollar All-Star game, sometimes the best alternative can actually be to just move on.

?

#healthcare #consulting #automation #artificialintelligence #sports