Assignment Objective

As reviewed in week 1, for your final project (due in week 8), you will be tasked to build an operational plan.  You will complete sections of this project throughout the course.  The development of a project charter is the first part of laying the ground work for your final paper.  Remember, this charter is lay out the project but not solve the problem.  Your research in the coming weeks will help you find the solution.  

Assignment Resources

Review Chapter 6 in your textbook(Exhibit 6.6 shows a charter example), in addition, review the additional resources provided in the 
Week 2 Module
 to prepare for this assignment.  Please see the links below for a project charter example.

·
The Multispecialty Clinic Project Charter Example

Paper Requirements

· Lay out paper as a project charter using the attached template:

Project Charter Template.docx

Actions

· APA formatting in regards to title page, formatting and references  (if used)

Additional Guidance

Things to consider when building the charter:

Team Structure and Authority

It is important to have the right team members that will help move the project forward. There will need to be accountability and documentation of roles and responsibilities. Like anything, everybody has to do their part to complete the task at hand. Unfortunately, one under performer can derail your whole project. In order to ensure everybody understands the scope, having a project charter is key, you will lay out ground rules, expectations and then all the details surrounding the project. This is the time you will also lay out the time commitment, as it relates to meeting times and work that will need to be completed. Having deadlines is important, sticking to them is even more important.

We are very good at putting together robust documents with great ideas, but forget to assign responsible parties and deadlines for deliverables. Without these items, the plan is nothing but words on a piece of paper.

Project management is a key tool that is used to enhance operations, as it helps you review processes and find the way to be effective and efficient with the resources you have, and helps you find ways to be innovative to re-engineer your work.

View Rubric

Project Selection and the Charter

The leadership team must decide what their focus of the year will be and which of these require a project to complete. Referring back to your 
balanced scorecard
 will be key in making these decisions. This will help keep you focused as it is easy to get wrapped up in the large amount of work that needs to be addressed. By keeping your balanced scorecard focused, you will be able to easily identify what projects need to be selected.

The leadership team will need to lay out all the potential projects, assign a priority to each one, and define a timeline. Once that has been established, they need to identify the strategic alignment, financial impact, quality/productivity impact, customers/patients impact, staff availability and training and probability of success of each project. Once you assign points to each one of these categories, it will help you prioritize the projects.

Project Charter

Once you have identified your projects, you will need to pull together the key stakeholders. Begin by identifying the executive and physician stakeholders, and then the core team. The charter sets the groundwork, reviews the ground rules, the objective and goal of the project, timeline, and activities that need to be completed.

There are four key categories of a charter: (Input sample charter)

1. Time

2. Cost

3. Scope

4. Performance

How do you identify your stakeholders?

These are those that are directly impacted by the project. Who is held accountable for the project? Who will be part of the decision making process? Who will own action items?

These are the questions that need to be asked as you build your project team. You will first and foremost need an executive and possibly a physician champion (depending on the kind of project and how clinical it may be). Your department has decided to look at ways to improve patient access. Who should be part of this team? Medical director? Director? Manager? All of these individuals have direct ties to the work being done and should be part of the team. Where your executive champions may not be available for every meeting, they need to sponsor your project, advocate for the work being done, and help with the tough decisions or situations that may come down the pike.

Feasibility Analysis

As you develop the charter, it is important to measure the feasibility of the project. What is realistic and will drive change? If you propose building a new facility, do you have executive support for this? Or are you going to look at adding a scheduling department to streamline the work to help improve access by taking non-clinical work out of clinical space? Which one of these approaches is more feasible?

The Elements of the Project Charter 

As you work through all of these fine points, you will begin to build your ‘Project Charter’. As stated previously, there are four areas you need to cover in the charter, this document will also serve as your executive summary. When you need to re-focus and ensure you are staying on track, this document will help you.

1. Project mission statement

2. Project purpose or justification and connection to strategic goals (that balanced scorecard creeps in again)

3. High-level requirements that satisfy customers, sponsors and other stakeholders

4. Assigned project manager and authority level

5. Summary milestones

6. Stakeholder influences

7. Functional organizations and their expected level of participation

8. Organizational, environmental, and external assumptions and constraints

9. Financial business case, budget, and return on investment

10. Project sponsor with approval signature

Going back to our example of improving patient access. You have an outpatient Multispecialty Clinic that has long wait times for new patients to get in. You don’t have a clear scheduling template that helps guide your teams to schedule appointments and the intent of the service line is foggy, meaning you are seeing some continuity patients which takes away from the “specialist” intent. How do you address this?

Review the 
The Multispecialty Clinic Project Charter Example >>

The Multispecialty Clinic Project Charter Example

Recall the elements of the Project Charter:

1. Project mission statement

2. Project purpose or justification and connection to strategic goals (that balanced scorecard creeps in again)

3. High-level requirements that satisfy customers, sponsors and other stakeholders

4. Assigned project manager and authority level

5. Summary milestones

6. Stakeholder influences

7. Functional organizations and their expected level of participation

8. Organizational, environmental, and external assumptions and constraints

9. Financial business case, budget, and return on investment

10. Project sponsor with approval signature

Mission Statement

This project will implement processes to help improve patient access to our Multispecialty Clinic, by which we will decrease wait times and improve satisfaction and quality of care.

Project Scope

The Multispecialty Clinic currently has a 6-week wait for new patients to be seen, which is a deterrent for referring providers. The long wait has a large impact on the financial, quality and service metrics of the department. By looking at ways to streamline scheduling of appointments, by ways of implementing a call center, and building a care pathway that helps patients see the specialists in a ‘consult’ capacity and redirect them back to their primary care provider for continuity care, we hope to improve access and the quality of care that the patients are receiving, in turn improving outcomes and decreasing ED visits and hospital readmissions.

High-level Requirements

Upon completion, the new process will:

1. Reduce wait time for new patients to be seen to under 10 days

2. Reduce ED visits

3. Improve patient outcomes

Assigned Project Manager and Authority Level

Susan Magnet, RN, will be the project manager who will manage the budget, timeline, scope and performance. Anything above that will need to be approved by the executive and physician champions.

Summary Milestones

The project will kick off on February 1
Metrics will be defined by March 15
Planning will occur for 3 months
Implementation will go live on June 15

Stakeholder Influences

Clinicians – provide the best care
Patients – understand the intent and goal of the clinic
Clinic and Call Center staff – understand the goal and are held accountable

Functional Organizations and Their Participation

Clinic management will lead research best practices on patient access at other similar facilities with the same kind of payor mix and potential challenges.
IT support to help build the call center tools and system.

Organizational Environmental and External Assumptions and Constraints

Patients understanding the difference between primary care providers and specialists
Physicians availability
Challenges in organizing a call center

Financial Business Case – Return on Investment

By adding a call center, and improving access there will be the ability to add more patient volume, which will, in turn, generate revenue from the visit, and downstream revenue from any testing and/or procedures that may come of that visit.

Project Sponsor with Approval Signature

Dr. Beth Smith, Medical Director

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