A Journey in Project Management of
an Enterprise Clinical RTLS Program
Kimberly Brayley
Director, RTLS Project Management Office
Veterans Health Administration
Areas of Concentration
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Defining your Project
Schedules and Tasks
Resourcing
Communication &
Education
– Tracking Progress
– Risks, Issues, and Lessons
Learned
– Measuring Success
Hospital System to Health System
In 1996, VA began the creation of Veterans Integrated Service Networks (VISNs) to
transform VA Health Care from a “Hospital System” to a “Health System.”
VHA currently has 21 VISNs:
• 152 Medical Centers
• 974 Outpatient Clinics
– 807 Community-Based
– 152 Hospital-Based
– 9 Mobile
• 6 Independent
• 288 Vet Centers
• 98 Domiciliary Residential Rehab
Programs
• 133 Community Living Centers
VA RTLS Primary Objectives
•
Deploy the set of nationally standardized RTLS solutions to:
– VHA Medical Centers, Clinics, non-patient care locations
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That will:
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Improve operational efficiency and the quality of Veteran care
Decrease operational costs
Maximize equipment utilization
Increase efficiencies and staff productivity
Reduce delays and improve patient care
Minimize lost and misplaced items
Improve customer and staff satisfaction
Improve the quality and safety of service from patient, physician, and
institution perspectives
VA RTLS Primary Objectives (cont.)
•
Establish a capability that is compatible and interoperable with
existing information systems internal and external to VA
– Ensuring integration, scalability and ease of sustainment across technologies
•
Provide medical centers and other VA facilities with the real-time
capability to actively track:
– Selected assets, significant medical supplies, staff, patients, and
environmental conditions (e.g., temperature and humidity) through a common
interface and reporting tool
•
Deploy a single instance of a NDR solution for:
– Aggregation and in-depth analysis of data from individual “front-end” RTLS
instances: National Data Repository (NDR)
RTLS Program Approach
Review Prior
Investments
 Assess
requirements
 Study lessons
learned
 Document
programmatic
information
 Assess process
flows
 Identify outcomes
and ROI
 Determine needs
for hardware and
software
Design Plan
 Determine
sequential
dependencies
between
requirements and
procurements
 Identify and apply
critical success
factors
 Standardize
procurement
strategies and
outcomes
Procure and
Install
 Provide solution
on a National
Contract
 Implement
comprehensive,
sustainable and
repeatable system
and user training
 Controlled
deployment in VA
facilities for
system and
applications / use
cases.
Implement
Change
Management
 Ensure active
involvement of
leadership and
staff for adopting
use of technology
 Sustain
communication
and education
 Ensure
programmatic and
business concerns
are addressed
 Continue to grow
uses for
technology
Defining your Complex Project
Defining your Complex Project (cont.)
Project
Manager
COR
Project Planner
Financial Manager
Change Manager
Contractor Point of
Contact
Educator
Deliverable
Management
Leader
OnBoarding
Schedules and Tasks
•
What tasks go into a Project Plan?
– Your Tasks
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Workgroups
Committees – not in project
Named resources
– Contractor Tasks
•
Subcontractors
•
Who manages the schedule? How often do you review it?
•
What is the real time to complete a task?
•
Milestones -Impacts for not meeting dates?
•
Other Projects and Issues impacting your schedule
–
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Joint Commission
Construction Schedules
Budget Cycles
Vacations, Holidays, Shift work, Patient Care Areas
Schedules and Tasks:
RTLS PMO Integrated Master Schedule (IMS)
• Developed an RTLS IMS,
integrating all project schedules
into a single high-level source
view:
• RTLS Procurements
• RTLS Deployments
• RTLS Associated Projects
• RTLS National Application Workgroups
• RTLS PMO
Schedules and Tasks: 30/60-Day Outlook Report
• Developed and provide a monthly 30/60-Day Outlook Report at the
beginning of each month of the entire RTLS program
Resources
• Roles and Responsibilities
• Can you name all the
players on your team?
– Who’s on First, What’s on
Second? Exactly…
• Do you have more than 1
SME in an area?
• Don’t task yourself
• Is everyone on the right
bus and in the right seat?
Communication and Education
Communication
Education
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Email Groups
SharePoint's
Messaging
Internal PR Plan
Newsletters
Seeing and Understanding
Change management
Frequent
Tiered levels for audience
Lunch and Learns
The task of a leader is to get his people from where they are… to where they have
not been - Henry Kissinger
Tracking Progress
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Action Item List
Deliverables
Paying Bills Timely
Performance Requirements
Reviews with Contractor
Internal Gate Reviews
Tracking Progress: RTLS Manager Dashboard
Developed a Pilot RTLS Dashboard for VISN
Managers:
•
Serves as an overarching and holistic
tool for each VISN TO, through
aggregation of preexisting data sources
– Budget (Schedule B, Invoices)
– Schedule (Project Schedule)
– Resources (onboarding, Training)
Tracking Progress: Gate Reviews for Procurement
Program
Initiation
Program
Sustainment
Base Deployment Project
Program
Initiation
PreProcurement
Checkpoint 1
informal review
of activities with
PMO POC
Gate Review 1
formal review of
ARP
Gate Review - Decisional
Checkpoint - Preparation
Procurement
Gate Review 2
formal review of
activities up to
TO Award
Contract
Initiation
Project
Close
Implementation
Checkpoint 2
informal review
of preparation
tasks with
PMO POC
Checkpoint 3
informal
review(s) of
each
application
being
implemented
at a facility
Gate Review 3
Once the last
facility
implements an
application,
initiate the
formal review
Checkpoint 4
Informal
review of
activities to
close out the
project
*Form included for
Checkpoint 3; Plan
to review the
Deliverable Matrix
during the other
Checkpoints
16
Sustainment
Gate Review 4
formal review of
activities to
maintain RTLS
Tracking Progress: Gate Reviews for Applications
Workgroup Gate Review Lifecycle
Development
Requirements
Gate Review 1
Gate Review 2
Acquisition
Gate Review 3
LifeCycle
Management
Implementation
Gate Review 5
Gate Review 4
Gate Review - Decisional
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Workgroup Gate Review Deliverable Approval Matrix
Tracking Progress: Tools and Templates
Tools and Templates
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Do you have them?
Can others access?
Does it tell a story?
Is it helpful?
How often do you update it?
Managing your tasks vs the tasks
managing you…
Risks, Issues, and Lessons Learned
• Risks:
– Will create a negative effect on your program
– Must be mitigated
• Issues:
– Problems, situations, findings and decisions that arise during the
program that you may need to take action on or document the
outcome.
• Lessons Learned:
– Complexity provides for greatest usage
– Understanding our mistakes, help us to not repeat them
– Can you avoid same mistakes others have already made?
Would you rather Fail Alone.. Or Succeed as a Team?
Measuring Success
The measure of success is not whether you
have a tough problem to deal with, but
whether it is the same problem you had last
year. - John Foster Dulles
Measuring Success (cont.)
• Did you document your expected outcomes?
• What story can you tell after you have
completed your project?
• Soft vs Hard Benefits…
• Pre and Post measurements
Benefits Realization
Functional Area
SPD Workflow
Improve Patient Care
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Improve Managerial Decision
Support
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Reduce Inventory and Equipment
Costs
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Improve Staff Efficiency
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Improve Consistency of Services
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Benefit Name
Temp
Monitoring
Cath Lab
Inventory
Management
Asset
Management
Benefit #1: Improve Patient Safety
Currently
Measured?
Performance Metric Name: Recall Turn-Around Reduction
Metric 1.1: Length of time it takes to respond to a recall after receiving
recall order
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What type of PM are you?
• Leading or Managing
– You manage things and lead people…
• Problem Solving or Creating
– Are you carrying around a fire extinguisher?
• Partnering - not just hiring the help
– Are we all on the same team?
It's not easy… but it's worth it
It's not easy… but it's worth it
It's not easy… but it's worth it
IF IT’S NOT WORKING…
“That's just stupid. We need to look at the right
way to do things instead of the way we're doing
them now.”