A 5-Step Roadmap to Healthcare Project Success

By their very nature, projects involve working with a range of stakeholders, moving parts and unexpected challenges that can often be at odds with each other. For project managers in healthcare, this can come with its own set of extra challenges – from healthcare regulations and governance to risk management and potentially high-stakes outcomes. 

Depending on whether you’re in the private or public sector, project management in healthcare involves working with a broad variety of stakeholders and outside scrutiny, including insurance companies, regulators, and patients. Project management has become increasingly important in healthcare over recent years as projects shift to include digital initiatives and safety concerns; a project completed poorly can lead to patients’ health problems.

So all the more reason to get it right. To successfully manage healthcare projects, you need consistent processes, centralised information, and real-time tracking to reduce complexity and accelerate delivery and compliance. 

Follow our 5-step roadmap anytime you are embarking on a new project for improved planning and predictability to deliver projects efficiently.

Step 1: Streamline your project and initiative planning process

First, outline the key components of a typical program or project to better understand the resources, budget, and time that should be allocated towards it.

1. Create cloud-based templates for outlining key project details, such as vision and objectives, deliverables and project milestones, and budgets.
2. Ensure planning templates are accessible to all stakeholders and team members who are participating in the project, including the management bodies and individuals involved in implementation.
3. Set realistic deadlines and goals for tasks, and create a visual timeline to track them.
4. Outline project budget expectations to ensure budgets are discussed before project kick-offs, and loop in all stakeholders for buy-in.

Step 2: Strategise on project intake and prioritisation

Lack of prioritisation for healthcare projects can often lead to failure. Embarking on too many projects within one team means you may not be doing any of them well. But how do you prioritise? If this is the case, you need to be able to determine a consistent way to manage, prioritise, and gain approval on projects – staying on top of the different projects or activities in your organisation.

1. Outline and document steps to prioritise new projects or activitiesStandardise the project intake process by setting up a project request form that outlines all necessary project details. 
2. Set and formalise project approval standards with key stakeholders and follow established healthcare policies and guidelines for both your organisation and industry. See the project intake dashboard template for a bird’s eye view of the health and status of all projects as well as to get notified when new projects are submitted.

Step 3: Plan for flexible project initiation and execution

Many healthcare projects still rely on the waterfall project management structure; increasingly, however, the types of projects that healthcare are embarking on require a more flexible, agile approach. Unlike industries – like construction – where waterfall is traditionally used, healthcare often has numerous and constantly changing variables. Efficiently carrying out a project in a timely manner relies on streamlining the execution process and allowing for unexpected changes without derailing your outcomes.

1. Streamline project initiation by creating a project launch template, with clear details on each phase of the project and tasks underneath them.
2. Facilitate team collaboration across stakeholders by keeping project details and reports up to date throughout execution.
3. Document steps to identify and mitigate potential risks or success blockers and make them visible to your team.

Step 4: Manage project visibility

Many healthcare projects and their timelines face increased scrutiny; as such, deliverable and deadline transparency for all gives stakeholders a clear idea of activity at all times. To manage this, create one location for project details that allows your team to easily access, manage, and collaborate on tasks, with a secure and centralised real-time view into project status.

1. Ensure accountability by creating a tracking report to identify who is responsible for each task and ensure everyone knows their priorities.
2. Establish steps for assigning and re-allocating resources, and ensure it’s visible across teams. If your team members are going away on holidays or other leave, you can track all non-project resourcing updates in a resource management tracker.
3. Set up tracking and reporting guidelines to ensure budgets are managed throughout the project, and create a budget tracking report for your team to reference.

Step 5: Take steps for overall team collaboration

Team collaboration is important in any workplace, but even more so as many healthcare projects span beyond a traditional team. Larger projects may include consultants or span across multiple areas of the business or agency. They may involve collaborating with third parties – such as local authorities or insurance companies. 

It’s important to put the right collaboration tools in place along with creating a culture of transparency and accountability. Collaboration is the bedrock of any project’s success; look for tools that provide security and control at every step of the way.

1. Communication throughout the lifecycle of a project is key, so make sure you have a consistent plan in place that allows for collaboration during every step of the process.
2. Ensure stakeholders have a place to provide comments and attach feedback within the project plan and throughout execution.
3. Set up automated alerts to notify stakeholders when specific deliverables are due, or as project timelines and tasks change.
4. Document how teams and PMs should work together to improve collaboration and increase efficiency.

Conclusion

Delivering a successful project or initiative in healthcare relies upon transparency, compliance, and consistent processes that can be managed, tracked, and repeated by all team members and stakeholders in the one platform to minimise risk.

While healthcare project managers may have relied on more rigid methodologies in the past, the evolving nature of modern projects means finding the right approach to adapt to changing variables while staying on track. 

Having the right processes not only sets up a project for success but streamlines reviews and evaluations, giving visibility and accountability every single step of the way – from timelines all the way through to cost and risk management – in real-time, in one place. 

Once you’ve defined the right processes, allow your team to adapt to nuances and take control of their workloads, all with 360 degree visibility to stay ahead of any risks that could hinder the project’s goal. With the right approach, you can drive efficiencies and create real change.

With Smartsheet – the enterprise platform for dynamic work – you can make the move to more efficient project management today with our 30-day free trial that comes with access to many pre-structured and customisable templates. Streamline your projects by following these best practices to increase consistency, from project initiation to completion.