You have been tasked by the CIO to assist in a new project. Your 500-bed hospital has just acquired a 200-bed hospital in a town located about 60 miles away.A decision needs to be made on how to merge EHR systems or start from scratch and select a new system.However, financial considerations as well as the timing of the merger of the two hospitals.

Hospital A has a fully integrated system - all clinical and financial applications. Hospital B has all clinical and financial applications, but they are a best-of-breed shop, so they have many different vendor products with interfaces between all applications.

The decision needs to be made if Hospital B will go on Hospital A's EHR system, if Hospital A's EHR system will go on Hospital B's system, or if they will start from scratch and go with a totally new vendor.

• Bringing up a totally new system will take approximately three years to complete and cost approximately $50 million.
• Bringing Hospital B into the same system as Hospital A will take approximately 12 months with a cost of approximately $20 million.
• If Hospital A were to convert to Hospital B's system, it would take approximately 18 months with a significant loss of data because of the volume of patients. The cost would be approximately $30 million. If an entirely new system were implemented, the cost would be approximately $50 million.
• Aside from the dollars, the IT staff at Hospital B had a poor track record of implementing new systems. In addition, their IT department had a vacancy rate of 30%.

A. What technical aspects need to be considered?

B. Who are the major stakeholders in this case study?

C. What pieces of information are the most critical to solve this case study?

D. What other options, if any, do you have?

E. What integration and conversion considerations need to be thought through?

F. What are the critical success factors in this case?

G. What would be your final recommendation and why?