Give IT a Seat at the Table: Run your IT department like its own business unit.

Originally published in: Health Management Technology

Healthcare organizations have a painful history of investing in expensive information technology solutions, only to end up disappointed. This often stems from a disconnect between the IT department’s role in the organization and the overall business goals of the enterprise. A number of factors can cause this misalignment, the first of which is that IT is historically a service-oriented, back-office function. IT sees their internal counterparts as clients rather than colleagues, and IT tends to focus first on complying with requests from other departments rather than contributing to, and prioritizing the overall goals and strategy of, the business as a whole.

Additionally, like many business units, IT departments often have a tendency toward empire building. They strive to grow the department through bigger projects, driving the need for more staff and more budget, elevating the influence of the department within the organization. This mentality can create a bias toward building, versus buying and/or outsourcing, regardless of what might be best for the company in the long-term.

In healthcare, we see this phenomenon most recently and most dramatically in the population health push. Read the rest of the article.