With effective project management in healthcare, you can develop plans, break everything down into simple steps, track progress, and enjoy an end result that often exceeds expectations. Project management best practices help you delegate responsibilities and stick to a budget to keep your plans on track, and using related software and templates helps you chart every step so teams know what to do next.
In this article, you’ll learn why project management is essential for healthcare facilities and offices as well as some of the challenges you might face. We’ll also share some resources you can use on monday.com to manage projects in any setting, including healthcare.
What is project management in healthcare?
Project management in healthcare refers to a series of methodologies and tools used to help achieve desired outcomes. For example, some healthcare leaders may assume their goals, like increasing employee retention or investing in better equipment, are too expensive or time-consuming to achieve.
But good project management provides a step-by-step plan and proven methodologies that make it more likely you can achieve goals of all types.
Common steps for healthcare projects
While every leader has their own strategy, project management typically involves some version of the following steps:
- Initiation: At the beginning of a project, teams determine goals and brainstorm solutions. You must also consider costs, deadlines, resources, and equipment that you need for the project. You might create a rough time and budget estimate and start talking to co-workers and executive leadership about putting the project concept into action.
- Planning: Once teams have a clear outline in mind, they create a step-by-step plan with a budget, firm deadlines, milestones, and a breakdown of how you’ll achieve each goal. A project manager or leader typically helps delegate tasks to each person on the team once stakeholders or sponsors approve the plan.
- Execution: With the help of project management software, teams execute the project plan. Most projects need a few adjustments along the way, and regular check-ins and use of good project management tools can help teams keep efforts on track and aligned to their goals.
- Conclusion: Finally, teams compile results and take action, discuss a follow-up plan, or provide findings to stakeholders. You may review your team’s performance and celebrate accomplishments while discussing lessons learned and possible improvements for future project processes.
Now that you know what project management is and what’s involved in the process, let’s discuss why your facility needs project management in the first place.
What challenges can healthcare project management help solve?
Healthcare margins are not as large as many might believe. For example, in March 2021, the average margin for hospitals in the U.S. — not including government aid payments — was less than 1.5%. Low margins and ever-changing health insurance policies create an even greater need to improve patient care and other healthcare projects with a close eye to budgets.
Project management helps you keep track of everything and make adjustments to cut costs and deal with surprise expenses.Healthcare project management also keeps efforts on strict deadlines to ensure outcomes arrive when they’re needed. Project managers set deadlines, track completion rates, and talk to coworkers when due dates are approaching. Teams that use good project management tools have visual assets such as calendars and graphs to help see what’s coming next and who has to achieve what by when. As you hit milestones, you can complete projects as promised and start looking at upcoming strategies for more improvements.
Project management tools and methods also help you organize information and communications to ensure multiple teams working toward the same efforts can avoid miscues or issues like doing the same work without realizing it. And as team members collaborate and find information easily, they’re more likely to remain productive and optimistic throughout the duration of the project.
Of course, simply invoking the concept of project management in your organization doesn’t automatically lead to all these benefits. Providing teams with the tools they need to manage projects well, such as project management software and medical software, is important.
monday.com supports more than project management in healthcare
monday.com’s project management software automates data collection, provides live updates, and facilitates collaboration to free up more time and money for the project itself. But healthcare teams can also use our Work OS to support other daily operations, ranging from clinical to business administration.
- Surgeons are using monday.com boards to track patients and procedures, monitor procedure effectiveness, and manage logistics.
- Clinical organizations can rely on monday.com for HIPAA compliance when using Enterprise Plans.
- Some of our templates are specific to daily operations in medical environments, such as our Medicine Chart Template.
Once you’ve signed up for monday.com, you can access hundreds of free templates to organize data and customize your experience.
Related templates to healthcare project management
Once you’ve started thinking about your next strategy, use templates to keep everything organized and provide a collaborative workspace.
Project Requests and Approvals Template
Since project management requires a collaborative effort, you need a streamlined way to gather issues, proposals, and requests that might affect your project’s trajectory. Our Project Requests and Approvals Template helps you collect requests and present them in a single dashboard. A graph at the top displays the number of approved, rejected, and “under consideration” requests along with new submissions.
Project Portfolio Management Template
If you’re running multiple projects at once, keep everything straight with our Project Portfolio Management Template. It lets you list projects on a single board so you can check progress in minutes without switching between different screens. Customize your view with tables, charts, and diagrams to get the overall picture, then scroll down for more details.
This template displays each project along with the owner, due date, timeline, status, owner, and priority rating. Check each project to see who’s still on track and who needs help to stay on schedule. Afterward, view the workload to see who’s available for more responsibilities. You can also glance at the calendar for a visual reference on the deadlines.
Now that you know where to start, a little background information helps you make the most out of your templates and other project management tools. We’ve provided some answers for common questions about healthcare project management for that reason.
FAQs about project management in healthcare
Can a project manager work in the hospital?
Many project managers work in hospitals. Their job responsibilities may include ordering medical supplies, increasing the hospital’s efficiency, or evaluating a department’s budget. Having project managers in hospitals helps facilities stay on top of a fast-moving industry that needs frequent reviews to better serve its patients.
Why do healthcare projects fail?
Many healthcare projects fail because they aren’t properly managed. Tasks may be delegated to inexperienced employees, or leadership may demand results without taking the right steps to get there. In some cases, leadership doesn’t take into account the time, budget, and number of employees a project needs to succeed, leading to a poor foundation that sets a project up for failure.
What does PMP stand for?
A Project Management Professional is an individual who earned the designation from the Project Management Institute (PMI). These individuals meet rigorous standards outlined in the Project Management Body of Knowledge and demonstrate project management skills. To get certified, the PMP must work for a certain amount of time in project management, take 35 hours of classes, and pass the PMP exam.
Successful project management in healthcare with monday.com
With project management in healthcare, you can streamline processes, free up resources, and increase employee satisfaction rates as they tackle new challenges. You can also take on projects that once seemed daunting as you work toward success via a structured series of milestones and planned steps.
To save time, healthcare organizations can invest in products that automate project management functions and make tools more accessible to everyone. Features on monday.com support seamless collaboration, automation, and a variety of project management methodologies. To this end, many healthcare organizations are turning to healthcare software development companies that specialize in creating tailored solutions to meet their unique needs. These companies use their expertise to build intuitive software that not only automates but also enhances project management capabilities, aligning perfectly with platforms like monday.com to boost efficiency and collaboration.
Related: Project management industries, Project management for non-project managers, Project management for governmental organizations, Project management for education
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