Understanding and Analyzing the Change Process

Abstract

Managers of all types in the healthcare arena face the challenge of introducing significant informatics changes into their organizations. It is impossible to introduce such a system into an organization without the people in that organization feeling the impact of change. The word information itself implies change since data become information only after the data are processed, i.e., altered, in ways that make the data useful for decision making. Inevitably, those enhanced decision-making capabilities are going to affect the organization. People in the organization will often perceive the following effects:

• the pressure to develop new skills

• the danger of looking stupid or incompetent in these new skill areas

• the loss of professional status

• the pressure of higher performance expectations

• the pressure of higher accountability through better measurements, and

• the danger of losing one’s job to increasing automation.