{"id":29408,"date":"2020-05-01T16:59:47","date_gmt":"2020-05-01T20:59:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/?p=29408"},"modified":"2023-09-12T09:46:39","modified_gmt":"2023-09-12T13:46:39","slug":"microsoft-teams-and-healthcare-lessons-learned-from-early-adopters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/blog\/microsoft-teams-and-healthcare-lessons-learned-from-early-adopters\/","title":{"rendered":"Microsoft Teams and Healthcare: Lessons Learned from Early Adopters"},"content":{"rendered":"
Microsoft Teams<\/a> has great potential to help employees<\/a> in virtually every field, but especially healthcare workers. Teams\u2019 voice or video meeting capabilities, its power to enable real-time chat messaging between groups, and its tools that allow healthcare workers to share documents securely drive not only collaboration but also promote social distancing.<\/p>\n In this blog, I will discuss some valuable \u201clessons learned\u201d that will help healthcare leaders identify obstacles and compress Teams\u2019 time to value as they prepare to meet the challenges ahead.<\/p>\n\n Problem:<\/strong> Existing VPN capabilities (licensing and bandwidth) are common constraints. For example, Teams\u2019 video-chat capabilities are powerful in healthcare settings, but they can eat up a lot of bandwidth, especially in large organizations.<\/p>\n Solution:<\/strong> First, read my colleague Carmen Fontana\u2019s<\/a> advice for increasing your VPN speed<\/a>. Then, explore cloud-based VPN services, or skip VPN altogether and access Teams directly from the cloud. In any case, fast, secure, reliable access is essential.<\/p>\n Security is another VPN concern. To address this problem, look into \u201csplit tunneling\u201d your VPN.<\/a> Split tunneling allows you to choose which traffic goes through your VPN server and which goes through your internet services provider.<\/p>\n Problem:<\/strong> Often, access lists and groups are out-of-date or not configured for Teams. That can leave some employees locked out of Teams and frustrated.<\/p>\n Solution:<\/strong> Consider using your existing configurations (Active Directory, Email Distributions or EHR access models) instead of building new lists from scratch.<\/p>\n Problem:<\/strong> Situations arise leaving many leaders too busy to focus on governance. Unfortunately, key governance decisions are difficult to undo once in place and have long-term impacts.<\/p>\n Solution:<\/strong> Use an existing leadership group already working as a productive team, educate them on Teams essentials, and keep it simple. Below are the major decisions to be made for every Teams deployment:<\/p>\n Problem:<\/strong> Teams is an intuitive product, but people within your organization will have varying levels of technical skill and comfort with new technologies.<\/p>\n Solution:<\/strong> Use Microsoft\u2019s free materials to tailor training for each user group.<\/p>\n Problem:<\/strong> Not sticking the landing in your Teams deployment leads to poor adoption and exacerbates Help Desk challenges.<\/p>\n Solution:<\/strong> Take a tiered approach.<\/p>\n Problem:<\/strong> The organization\u2019s \u201cgolden\u201d browser configuration is inconsistent (or inconsiderate of) O365 and Teams requirements.<\/p>\n Solution:<\/strong> After assessing and defining the gap, develop a new \u201cgolden\u201d copy of the browser. Then test to ensure your standard desktop configuration supports Teams without interfering with other enterprise applications, like your EHRs. Finally, deploy in alignment with your SOPs.<\/p>\n Problem:<\/strong> The healthcare organizations we have worked with have most, if not all, of the skills needed because their IT shops already have a Teams tenant working. Challenges often arise that compel leaders to look outside of their organizations.<\/p>\n Solution:<\/strong> Take advantage of Microsoft\u2019s online materials. If you do find you need dedicated support, contact your Microsoft Customer Success Manager or a certified Microsoft Partner.<\/p>\n Problem:<\/strong> Security usually gets some love within organizations, but performance and adoption metrics routinely become less of a focus post-deployment.<\/p>\n Solution:<\/strong> Keep your Teams Tenant healthy.<\/p>\n Microsoft Teams is a stable, secure and valuable platform that supports virtual operations and improves team performance across a broad spectrum of metrics — and chances are, you\u2019re already paying for it through O365.<\/p>\n I hope this blog anticipates some of the problems healthcare leaders may experience as they deploy Teams. And if you have already completed your deployment and would like to share your lessons learned, I am eager to hear about your experiences. Please reach out to share your own lessons learned to help your colleagues accelerate adoption.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" While most have seen immediate benefits using Microsoft Teams in healthcare, some have encountered challenges. We share lessons learned from early adopters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":276,"featured_media":29409,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_oasis_is_in_workflow":0,"_oasis_original":0,"_oasis_task_priority":"","_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[16862,16926],"coauthors":[18010],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2024-07-21 22:31:35","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29408"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/276"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29408"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29408\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29409"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29408"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/centricconsulting.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=29408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Lesson 1: VPN<\/h2>\n
Lesson 2: Access<\/h2>\n
Lesson 3: Governance<\/h2>\n
\n
Lesson 4: Initial and On-Going Training<\/h2>\n
\n
Lesson 5: Go-Live and On-Going Support<\/h2>\n
\n
Lesson 6: Browser Wars<\/h2>\n
Lesson 7: Resourcing<\/h2>\n
Lesson 8: System Health<\/h2>\n
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Conclusion<\/h2>\n