by Lee Fried, on 07 Jun 2007 07:07 am
The Journey
Moonshine
Like most heathcare organizations we have large information systems that process incredible amounts of information. Over time these systems have become more and more resource intensive and rigid as we add services and the complexity of our products has grown. Often the systems become so removed from the processes it is difficult to gain a line of site to the value that they are suppose to be providing in the first place. Additionally, over time we have not been disciplined about taking the waste out of our processes before we automate. This has resulted in us often locking in complexity and taking away the flexibility to make quick improvements to our processes since all changes become reliant on IT resources.
This week we began planning for our first “Moonshine group” in the Model Line area. For those of you that don’t know a Moonshine group is a cross-functional team that is focused on making transformational change through prototyping. The group, if approved by leadership is going to be focused on “right sizing” the technology of our health plan. Our goal is to go back to the basics and see how simple we can make the programming so that what takes mainframes now might only take a laptop in the future. If we are successful the opportunities for improvement are huge and we can begin to move closer to our goal of creating a real time enterprise.
I am not sure if there are other examples or stories out there about Moonshine teams that were IT focused. If so, please share!
on 20 Jun 2007 at 12:08 pm 1.Melissa said …
Recently, we have started a Moonshine program in the federal sector. We (my team and I) have been able to facilitate a lot of successful projects that were IT focused and process focused. It is truly a grassroots effort here that is appreciated. The challenge is the change of mindsets to others that are not so willing to change and incorporating systems thinking into the process of “Moonshining”. For your efforts to be really successful, you need to ensure that there are workers that are appropriately represented in the process of planning otherwise, sustainment of this program will not be successful. Remember, you want the result to become part of the process and not just another “project”. Best of Luck!