BOSTON – Can healthcare organizations improve project management in a time of limited financial resources?

David Shore, co-director of the certificate program in project management in healthcare at the Harvard University School of Public Health, asked panelists this question during the recent World Health Care Leadership Summit on Project and Portfolio Management in Boston.

Shore, the panel’s moderator, asked executives at three health systems about their greatest challenges in project management.

Kim Savolainen, senior project manager at the Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation in Rochester, Minn., said defining and delimiting projects is onerous, while Paul Capello, project office manager at St. Petersburg, Fla.-based Bayfront Health System, listed keeping stakeholder satisfied as a dominant concern.

“Stakeholders do not always have to understand the details of project management, but they need to be able to see the benefits,” Capello said.

Buddy Gillespie, chief technology officer and CIO-emeritus at Wellspan Health in York, Pa., said the growing importance of technology makes project management challenging.

Shore asked the panelists to explain how they organize the competing concerns of resource management, project scope and timetables in “selling” their projects to hospital executives and other stakeholders.

“We have a small project management team and can focus on only a few things in a small time frame,” Savolainen said. “We always try to put very clear deliverables in place, but when we talk about implementing change organizationally, it’s like trying to steer the Titanic.”

Capello said a critical part of his job is to set and manage expectations.

“We have to clearly define what a project will bring to the organization,” he said. “You can set all the right expectations, but changes do happen, so you have to put in processes to address and manage change.”
Savolainen said defining “high-priority projects” allows for greater management focus and offers a higher probability of success. Still, the danger always exists that smaller projects will be neglected.

According to Shore, most project management offices in U.S. healthcare systems – when they exist – tend to reside in IT departments. But this may not be the best location.

“Why should project management reside in IT?” Shore asked. “How do we rebalance the portfolio?”