Ownership

The big news right now is the credit crisis in America. The pundits are all saying "the sky is falling, the sky is falling", yet when I look out the window, both literally and figuratively, things don't seem all that bad. Business is good, we have plenty of happy customers, and the local economy seems pretty decent.

I wonder to myself how we got into this so called "financial meltdown" and started doing a bit of reading. It seems one of the primary causes of the current financial crisis was the securitization of sub-prime loan portfolios. Basically a lender would loosen their lending standards, find anyone who could fog a mirror, loan them money to buy a house they were not qualified for, then package and sell that loan to an upstream bank or lending institution. This process created a disconnect between the lender and the borrower. Neither the borrower nor the lender had any "ownership" of the transaction. The lender would not actually have any direct dealings with the borrower. Instead a third party company would service the loan. Hence no personal relationship or what I call "ownership". The borrower would feel the same way - no relationship with their bank or lender, just some faceless company where they sent a check each month. When things would get a little tight the homeowner would just quit paying their payments without much worry about who loaned them money or who it was affecting. They had no ownership in the transaction.

How does this relate to PACS projects? In my mind it is crucial that someone from both the buyer and vendor take ownership of these types of projects. This "ownership" is what helps all parties deal with the complex issues that invariably arrive when implementing PACS. Too often I see a vendor sales rep sell a PACS system to a customer, then hand the project off to their "implementation team". This team does not have any relationship with the customer, they don't have any "skin" in the game, they just tell the customer what is needed and if it happens, great, if not, well it is the customer's problem.

What you end up with is a bunch of people saying "it's not my problem" because either they didn't sell it, they didn't buy it, or they feel they have no responsibility to make it all work.

I think one of the reasons we have been successful is that someone - usually me - will always take ownership of these projects. When the telecom company starts pointing fingers at the firewall, or the modality vendor starts pointing at the PACS vendor, or the HIS company has trouble integrating with the PACS company, SOMEONE has to take ownership and say "we have to get this working, we all need to set around a table and figure this out one way or another. We cannot leave the customer just hanging with a partially-functional system".

This ownership is often what deliniates successful PACS installs from unsuccessful, partially implemented installations. As a customer you need to find out who the "owner" of your project will be and make sure they are on board before signing the final contract. Otherwise you may be left with your own "meltdown".