Clinical Project Management..The Full Story

Project management in healthcare revolves mainly around IT projects and information systems, biotechnology,and clinical trials of pharmaceutical agents. The latter is usually referred to clinical project management, with roles like clinical research manager in a clinical research organization (CRO) .
However, this kind of clinical project management doesn't really concern the way doctors and nurses totally manage their cases from A-Z . What if project management methodologies were incorporated on the management of patients, regardless of the kind of disease or mode of treatment? And what if these processes were a routine part of daily work of doctors or nurses, who already follow some of these tools without being called project management, if we considered the medical case of each patient as a unique temporary project. Doctors , with the help and support of nurses, do go into all phases of a project, that is initiation by accepting patients and admitting them under their care; planning of their management based on the history, signs and symptoms, available test results, initial assessment, and discussion of treatment options to promote patient's autonomy and compliance; executing of the desired management plan by doing the required investigations, procedures, and giving the needed treatment; monitoring and controlling by daily rounds and examinations of the patient's clinical status, follow-up testing; and closing by discharging the patient or releasing him/her from the hospital when the outcome is successful and the problem is resolved. All these phases with other details in between involve a great amount of progress reporting and documentation in all sorts of charts and forms, consents and approvals,all recorded in the patient's chart,also involves justifications based on medical necessity, modifications of the management plan, communication with different stakeholders starting from the patient, his/her family, caregivers , medical staff and other internal and external parties, cost estimation and budgeting, especially in the private sector, quality monitoring of the treatment outcome and normalization of results, scheduling of the tests or treatment especially in lengthy cases, involvement of certain resources and manpower from different specialties and care delivery teams, and assessment of related risks with appropriate medical intervention if occurred, and lessons learned that can be utilized in future similar cases or medical research. Such process are in the heart of daily medical practice, becoming well organized and developed, and go hand in hand with evidence-based medicine and clinical practice guidelines. Looking at this from a project management point of view, one can integrate all in a unified and standard framework, and try to apply it to daily clinical management of patients, and see if this could let to improved outcomes, better client satisfaction, more efficient and waste-free work cycles, and perhaps to lower costs of medical treatment, especially in the current global situation, where reducing the cost of healthcare is facing higher demands, and has become one of the priorities for every political agenda.