As most of you know, I’m very fond of relating EMR to other parts of life (see marriage and divorce, pregnancy, marriage for money, weight loss, and Katherine posted a Lady or the Tiger one that I enjoyed to name a few). I think we can learn a lot from the comparisons. Plus, it makes the lesson memorable when it’s illustrated with a great analogy. Now you’ll know why I loved the following LinkedIn comment from Danny Lieberman. It’s in response to my post titled Hospital EHR Sales Not About Customer Satisfaction.
I remember from my days running a software development house, we had just finished a big installation at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem. We had put our hearts into the implementation and post-installation support – the CIO and hospital GM were happy and that is saying a lot because the GM was one of toughest cookies we ever met.
In parallel, we were romancing another client and since were so focused on Hadassah, the attention they got was sub-optimal.
I will never forget the CIO telling me “Danny – if this the kind of attention you give me while we’re dating, what will our relationship look like after we get married?”
This is key. Health IT vendors need to think long term and not just Obama first-term.
Remembering that the pre-sale phase is just a date or 2 or 3. After you make the sale – you have to live together, make ends meet, have a happy, successful and prosperous relationship.
It’s a great concept to think about with an EHR vendor. You may treat me great when we’re “EHR Dating”, but how are you going to treat me once we’re married?
This is why I say, if the EHR salesperson won’t spend 3 to 5 days in your practice watching how your office works…they don’t want your business bad enough.