Several years ago, I was new to the healthcare space….I had spent some time in manufacturing and as a consultant and I had done some really cool stuff. In fact, I thought I knew my stuff! One thing that kept happening was that I seemed to be spending more time re-working things than developing new things.
“The Chasm”
In healthcare there are a lot of great people who know a lot of great things…I work with pharmacists who can tell you anything you want to know about medications and how they work and what they can do….on the other side of the canyon…I can talk for hours about BI. Between us, however is this large space of emptiness…its that space where we have to figure out what the customer wants and what the customer needs….our role is to bridge that gap.
“Uh…excuse me…forgive me…just one more question…”
Back in the 1990’s there was a basic cable channel that would air re-runs of 1970’s tv shows and one of my favorites was “Columbo”. If you aren’t familiar with the premise its simple…the Peter Faulk played an unassuming detective that dressed in an old baggy overcoat, always had an unlit cigar and always seemed to be looking for a pencil or a lighter. He always seems amazed or confused at things and the entire time Columbo would ask little questions that would lead up to the “gotcha”…the “gotcha” was often that “one more question”.
“Standing on the shoulders of giants”
Isaac Newton once wrote “…if I have seen farther it is by standing on the shoulders of giants”. The list below is not something that came up with on my own…I worked with doctors, nurses, pharmacists, peers, other experts to combine things that help me really dig into the request. I don’t use this all the time but I make sure I hand this out to anyone who is just starting out.
I created the list below for healthcare but with some small changes you can easily make it work in your industry. If you want to reach out to me please do and we can chat about this. I would love to get your input
- What is the clinical or business question that needs to be answered with this requested report?
- How will this data be used? Will this report be used to seek out anomalies/rare events, track and trend issues, a summary report, etc?
- In its final state, how will this report be used? Will the data be copied into another spreadsheet, for further interpretation? Or consumed as is, by the end users?
- What is the required function of this report? How will this report answer the clinical or business question?
- What is the population that will be included in this report? Patients in a certain location, particular orders, diagnosis, age, department, etc…
- What is the population that will not go into this report? What are the exclusions?
- What are the required fields/columns?
- How will this report be sorted? What order should the report be arranged in?
- What calculations are required? Please define all calculations (rates, percentages, etc).
- Who will QA, approve, and determine the satisfactory conclusion of this report?
- How will the data be validated? Which patients/orders/scenarios can be provided to the analyst to provide an initial validation, prior to providing the first draft.
- Information Which individuals will receive this report, once it is completed?
Internal-to be used by the internal Analyst team
- What is the group originating this request?
- Who is the analyst available from the requesting group? If there is an analyst, that person will be responsible for all coordinating of meetings and requirement gathering.
- When is this report needed? If this report is a part of a bigger project when is the first need by date, and when is the last need by date?
- Is this a critical request? If so, the requestor must be responsible for escalating the request.
- Are there other requests in queue for the same user/group? If so, those stakeholders must be responsible to re-prioritize requests, and submit in email, the ranking.
- Is this report based on Notes, Flowsheets, ADT, etc…?-
- What application is the foundation of this report? ClinDoc, Orders, ASAP, HIM, etc…?
- Who is the contact for that application?