Practice Area: Business Use Programs
Advances in decision support technology frequently outpace a health plan’s ability to organize its operations and business process around the depth of features available in the tools. We have worked across many health plans and have a unique vantage point, having seen tools put into action across a variety of settings.
What is a business-use program?
A business-use program is a defined method for using technology tools to support business process and ensure that valuable outcomes are achieved. Successful programs are well thought out, structured and documented.
Organizations that are the most successful in capitalizing on their decision support tools have made a significant effort to rally around what the solutions provide and have deployed formal programs that make it clear to individuals how technology is to be used.
How is this an industry challenge?
In the health plan industry, too often the delivery of value from analytics and reporting is underwhelming when compared to the visions of value that inspired the purchase of the technology.
This is an industry problem that is very real but not frequently discussed outside of the health plan. After working with many plans, we find that there are common barriers to success, such as:
- Unclear expectations from leadership regarding how the technology is expected to be used to achieve the plan’s business objectives and how to measure goal attainment;
- Difficulties in moving a high-level vision to a concrete structure that has an operational workflow;
- Staff turnover;
- Senior leadership or strategy changes;
- Department silos that inhibit enterprise-wide business process; and
- Lack of user adoption which limits team members from taking advantage of the depth of what the solution offers.
What is this consulting service?
Grow Forward assists health plans to implement clear, structured and documented business programs that drive success.
Rather than providing unstructured consulting at an hourly charge, business-use program engagements are designed to have a beginning and an end. Our efforts begin with an assessment and recommendations. We proceed with developmental stages that have a discreet ending point where the health plan is able to operate independently.
What does this provide?
Our engagements work to strategically aim the technology solution, health plan team member competencies and business processes at the plan’s goals. Activities to achieve this may include one or more of the following:
- Assessment of the current use of tools and the barriers to success;
- Assistance in moving the plan’s high-level vision into structured business process;
- Strategy and execution on plans to overcome barriers;
- Assistance in crossing business department boundaries (including IS) to create mutually agreeable business programs;
- Partnering to develop program evaluation metrics and the processes required to harvest and report on the metrics;
- Expertise in providing customized training to support the business program; and
- Assistance in documenting the business program for consistency and continuity over time.