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Foresight Reengineering reminds Health Care of the 5 Ws

Foresight Consulting, Inc., a boutique consulting firm in Stamford, CT, has largely been known for its ability to effectuate major re-engineering changes to large global financial institutions for over two decades. In this time 37 banks have merged into one of the Top 4 Financial Institutions - Citigroup, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Wells Fargo.  Many banks have also sought to quickly respond to ever-changing industry standards such as Sarbanes Oxley, Basel and increasingly stringent Commercial Loan standards. Foresight has supported many of these re-engineering initiatives through facilitating the decision-making process to effectuate the necessary change to the Bank's core technological and operational infrastructure with minimal impact to its customers while increasing the Bank’s overall revenue, compliance and customer satisfaction metrics.  

Based on the degree of change being introduced by health care and its impact to patients, providers and insurance companies, Foresight was encouraged to focus its evaluative techniques on health care. Its founder and lead facilitator, Belinda Sheets, has been reviewing the current challenges within the industry and the level of prospective impact that will result. "It is imperative to derive a customized end-to-end approach to change in order to minimize the impact to the public and the respective institutions' supporting infrastructure to minimize cost, time and resources," explains Belinda.  The recent nationwide roll-out of the Affordable Care Act portrayed very common change management pitfalls when not planned with sufficient foresight -- ambiguous accountability and communications, insufficient testing, and a pre-mature implementation.  In basic terms, Belinda adds, they didn't focus on the Five Ws -- who, what, when, where and why.  

WHO are the impacted stakeholders -- both direct and indirect? Project Managers often focus on the primary stakeholder to drive the requirements and key milestones. This often causes negative impacts upstream and downstream of the process and ultimately to the end user or customer. Primary and secondary stakeholders are important to drive accountability. Optimally one lead stakeholder with a back-up should be assigned to the program from each impacted area. Too many stakeholders in any one area will have an adverse impact on the success of the program. 

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WHAT are the goals and objectives of the project – and do you have agreement from all stakeholders? Ask 5 people in an average project the intended goals and you will often get 5 different answers that are further subject to interpretation. This type of ambiguity results in decision-making that may inadvertently conflict with goals of the overarching initiative often resulting in delays, increased costs and  negative customer impact. Objectives should be clearly documented and validated by all stakeholders. They should also periodically be reviewed at key points in the program to ensure the project has not otherwise been subject to "scope-creep."

WHY are the goals and objectives important – and are they documented? A facet of each objective should include its purpose -- examples may include increasing revenue, reducing time, reducing documentation or increasing quality.  If the stakeholders cannot clearly state the purpose of an objective the project will not have a solid foundation against which to build. Each project needs a "North Star" to guide them. 

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WHEN can this be achieved – and do you have concrete deadlines and accountability? Oftentimes, an organization may have a goal or objective that can not be achieved in the shorter term which may cause frustration and increased costs resulting in lower morale and productivity. It is important, therefore, that each of the objectives include temporality to level-set expectations. Including shorter and interim term manageable objectives increases the likelihood of success of longer-term goals based, simply, on having early on achievements. A program team becomes more cohesive and successful with each recognized accomplishment. 

WHERE do the changes need to be made – and does it include stakeholder prioritization? Foresight employs a "matrix methodology" to capture the different attributes, impacts and priorities of a multi-faceted program. Typically, there are varying divisions, operational areas, geographies, technologies, etc. to be considered against the objectives of the program. Not all may benefit from change wherein others may greatly benefit. A cost/benefit assessment should be completed against each impacted area's current state process to optimize the areas of change. Sometimes no change is the best alternative for a particular facet or the change may just be “nice to have.”

Foresight ensures that the process is reviewed from end-to-end from a business, technological and operational perspective with consideration for short-term, interim-term and long-term goals. The five Ws should be considered throughout the project starting at inception, to best define the overall approach, as well as during execution, to optimize related tactical planning and issue resolution needs. This approach ensures all impacted stakeholders, inclusive of the end user – the customer or the patient -- as well as industry directives, are sufficiently considered to derive not only a successful initial implementation but also foster continual process improvement. This in turn creates a fluid and flexible infrastructure to facilitate inevitable prospective changes. Foresight Consulting with Belinda Sheets welcomes the opportunity to support health care to effectuate change across the complementary institutions to make it easier for the ultimate stakeholder, the patient. 

About Foresight: Foresight specializes in customized tactical and strategic Program and Project Management for the Retail, Commercial and Corporate divisions of financial institutions around the globe including New York, Florida, Boston, London, South Africa, Dubai, Hong Kong and Malaysia. Foresight has been recognized most for their ability to readily respond to the diverse organizational cultures, divisions, standards and needs of each of the change management programs. Foresight was also recently certified as a Women's Based Enterprise (WBE) by the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC) and is a member of the Business Council of Fairfield County and the Women’s Business Development Council.

For more information on Foresight Consulting services and Belinda Sheets, please visit:

http://www.foresightreengineering.com

or call 646-221-7559

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