If your health care organization is typical, you were successful in getting your electronic medical record (EMR) system installed on time and within budget. You declared victory and collected some money from meaningful use. But very quickly, you realized you were not getting the expected return on your investment. So you started the "optimization" process to make refinements, do some stuff over, and get it right this time.

The Journey Never Ends: Technology's Role in Helping Perfect Health Care Outcomes is dedicated to helping you derive value from your investment in the software and the people in your organization. It describes some of the major initiatives, post EMR implementation, which most health care organizations now face. Most of these are transformational in nature, and instead of being IT projects, they are business or clinical initiatives with an IT component. If you or your board thought you were done spending large amounts of money on IT after implementing your EMR, you’re dead wrong. Welcome to the new reality!