4 (Dumb) Mistakes HIT Leaders Keep Making

Maybe healthcare IT leaders spend a lot of time reading Socrates or Marx or Locke on the philosophy of human nature and whether we are doomed to repeat mistakes made throughout history, or whether we are free-willed creatures capable of charting our own course through existence.

Maybe these leaders are too busy putting a crank to recalcitrant vendors to pay much attention to the ethereal questions of change and inevitability. But it seems some healthcare information technology leaders are doomed by Sisyphean forces to make the same mistakes over and over again.

In more than a decade of covering this industry, HealthLeaders Media has talked to or surveyed hundreds of healthcare CIOs, CMIOs, physician leaders, nurse leaders and executives of all stripes on what makes HIT projects work and what makes them fail.

Some trends emerged to the point of boredom. In fact, I got so tired of reading case studies that praised the virtues of "getting physician buy-in" that I banned one earnest tech editor from using the term.

Years later, I'm amazed to hear that despite our constant work to bring common mistakes to light, the same gremlins are still with us. This is not to say all or even most healthcare HIT leaders make them, but too many are still…