Category Archives: Leadership

The Root Cause of Many EHR Failures is Poor Leadership

by J. Bryan Bennett

We recently learned of another C-level executive resigning over a failed or challenged EHR implementation (CEO of Georgia Hospital Resigns After Rocky EHR Implementation). These stories are beginning to come with increased frequency as most healthcare organizations are deep into their EHR implementation cycle. If you look closely, the reasons are almost always the same, i.e., lack of physician engagement, difficult implementation time frames or lack of the proper resources. When I read these stories, I usually come to one primary reason for the failure – bad leadership in two distinct areas.

The Root Cause of Many EHR Implementation Failures is Bad Leadership


I.T. blamed in Athens EHR debacle

I’m sure there’s a lot of blame to go around on why this implementation went wrong. I’ve found the bottom line comes down to leadership or lack thereof. It doesn’t matter which solution you’re implementing, if the plan has gaps, it’s going to fail. I said the very same thing several months ago in one of my HIMSS Future Care blogs: “Leadership Skills Needed for a Successful Data Enablement Transformation“.  @enabledhealth

I.T. blamed in Athens EHR debacle