Collaborative and Technology Enabled Approaches to Urgent Implementations

When Michigan Medicine’s legacy telecommunications vendor suddenly announced they would be discontinuing technical support, the organization had to quickly develop a transition plan. With an accelerated 3-month timeline, Michigan Medicine decided to transition to a new, innovative telecommunications platform. To accomplish the migration, Michigan Medicine had to gather operational and technical requirements and coordinate end-user training. A successful transition was critical to patient safety, patient satisfaction and operational efficiency. Further, patients would have reached a disconnected phone line if the transition was unsuccessful. Due to the urgent nature of the situation and organizational constraints, Michigan Medicine had to strategically leverage resources. Furthermore, transparent communication was critical as this implementation spanned inpatient, ambulatory, and revenue cycle operations. Through the use of strategies such as data visualization and robust prioritization processes, Michigan Medicine was able to successfully train and transition all users to the new telecommunication system by the set deadline.