EHR Implementation Procurement Plan
This is a practical guide to building a procurement plan for an ehr implementation project — what will be bought, how and from whom, adapted to the realities of implementing an electronic health records system.
What a Procurement Plan is
A procurement plan is what will be bought, how and from whom. For the full concept and how it works in general, see Procurement Management. On an ehr implementation project it plays the same role, tuned to this kind of work.
Why it matters for an EHR Implementation project
EHR Implementation projects live or die on implementing an electronic health records system. A well-built procurement plan gives the team a shared, explicit reference for exactly that — reducing ambiguity, aligning stakeholders, and making problems visible early enough to act. Skipping it, or doing it generically, is how ehr implementation projects drift into avoidable delay and cost.
What to include
- What to procure
- Contract types
- Selection criteria
- Timeline and SLAs
EHR Implementation-specific considerations
Tailor the procurement plan to the risks that most often derail ehr implementation projects:
- Clinical workflow disruption
- Patient-data privacy
- Clinician adoption
Example
On a real ehr implementation project, the procurement plan would be shaped by implementing an electronic health records system. In particular, it should explicitly account for the project’s biggest risks — clinical workflow disruption, patient-data privacy, clinician adoption — rather than treating them as afterthoughts.