The Geographic Information System (GIS) team at Inland Empire Health Plan (IEHP) successfully created internal advocates by educating their peers and showing them what is possible with GIS technology in healthcare. Not only did this accelerate the adoption of GIS technology at their organization, it also helped leaders gain valuable operational insights sooner than if the technology was left to organically gain traction.
Healthcare IT Today sat down with Eric Dick and Darren Moser, GIS Informaticists at IEHP to learn more about their success at turning colleagues into advocates and how this has had a positive impact on their organization as well as their members.
It is not easy to get people in healthcare excited about new technologies, let alone become advocates. But when it does happen, a geyser of ideas erupts and suddenly everyone in the organization is finding ways to leverage the technology. Instead of just one or two individuals pushing forward, leaders from across the organization work collaboratively to remove barriers so that the technology can more easily be integrated into daily operations.
That is what is happening with GIS technology at IEHP.
GIS at IEHP
IEHP is a health plan that covers two counties in Southern California – Riverside and San Bernardino County. They are a Medicare and Medicaid health plan insuring over 1.5 million members.
IEHP uses GIS technology from Esri for:
- Network adequacy
- Capacity planning
- Tracking HEDIS measures
- Monitoring compliance
“We do a lot of reporting about network adequacy,” said Dick. “We are able to report where our members are relative to where our providers are.” IEHP does this work with pinpoint accuracy.
Departmental Buy-In
When the IEHP GIS team first rolled out the technology, departmental users began asking for static paper and PDF maps.
“People liked the paper and PDF maps that we were able to create for them,” explained Dick. “They liked including screenshots of those maps in their presentations and they grew accustomed to having something that they could hold onto. It was a process to move them from paper to a digital format.”
“A best practice that Eric really pushed was not to just create the PDF,” continued Moser. “He made it part of our practice to create a web-app, which is an interactive online version of the map along with the static PDF that was requested – even though it wasn’t what our users asked for.”
Dick and Moser would put a link in the PDF to the interactive map (web-app) and over time the IEHP users began to move away from the static PDFs. Now, instead of producing multiple PDF maps to show the information, IEHP users use the web-app and can easily drill down or zoom out to get the desired level of detail.
In a way, Dick and Moser took a page from Henry Ford, the great automotive industrialist who once said: “If I had asked them what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” What Dick and Moser did was truly insightful – helping their peers discover a new way of achieving their goals and over time, changing their organization’s muscle memory through an improved experience with GIS technology. It wasn’t pushy – just smart.
“We’re finally seeing a return on our investment,” said Moser. “Now when we get requests for complex maps we just make a single web-app that we can easily customize to show the data they want.”
Executive Buy-in
To gain executive buy-in, Dick and Moser put a lot of thought into the way they presented information. Right from the start, they decided to standardize the look and feel of their maps to align with their organizational branding. They also worked to improve map readability. They adopted a consistent way to display county lines across all maps.
“We kept it all very standardized so that every time, no matter what department was using the map, they knew what they were looking at,” explained Moser.
In the end, it was the insights that executives gained from the maps that secured their buy-in. With their network and member information anchored to geographic locations, and with near-real-time integration with their operational data, executives could better plan for different scenarios.
Patience and Coaching
In the beginning, Dick and Moser spent time coaching and guiding peers and executives through the maps they were creating. They were patient and took the time to answer all the questions that were posed. They did not refer users to an FAQ or send a link to an explainer video, they spent time one-on-one with everyone who asked for their expertise.
With just two people on their team, this was an enormous investment of time, but they were confident it would pay off in the long run. The enthusiasm both Dick and Moser had for GIS technology spread to others at IEHP. Over time more and more peers became internal advocates. Today, momentum continues to grow as the organization finds more and more uses for GIS.
Watch the full interview with Eric Dick and Darren Moser to learn:
- How IEHP is using GIS to track and report network adequacy
- What features of their maps were most appreciated by leaders and executives
- Why leveraging the data in their data warehouse is key to continued success of GIS at the organization
Learn more about IEHP at: https://www.iehp.org/
Learn more about Esri: https://esri.com/health
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