Importance of Needs Assessment to Project Management in Healthcare

Importance of Needs Assessment to Project Management in Healthcare

 Organizations use needs assessment to control priorities and make improvements or determine how they should distribute resources within them. The process entails determining the requirements between the company’s future and current conditions, and how to make improvements. Additionally, the needs assessment is a development course of actions which should be addressed to bridge the gaps within a healthcare organization, to realize its future anticipated state. The importance of needs assessment to project management in health care include contributing to program planning, improving decision making, and identify gaps.

Needs assessment helps in planning projects that will address particular goals to prevent a situation where the health care organization engages in a project without a defined scope or anticipated outcome (PEYKARI et al., 2013). Furthermore, it helps to determine the where gaps exist between the desired and current situation and make the necessary changes. For instance, one area of a health care project might be receiving excess funding as compared to others. The difference in funding presents a gap that the project should focus on to ensure that no area lags, or delays the accomplishment of the intended goal..

The process of decision making in healthcare projects is often difficult since different department and workers have to be consulted. Additionally, the decision made concerning the project might be wrong because people often base their judgement on irrational heuristics (PEYKARI et al., 2013). However, the needs assessment provides the project manager with relevant information about what should be done, where, and at what time. Therefore, needs assessment significantly helps in avoiding errors that may occur in health care projects due to poor decisions.

Lastly, needs assessment helps the project manager in determining whether all workers and departments in the organization are working towards the goal of the project. In case a gap or an overlap is spotted, the manager can decide how to remedy the situation by either maximizing impact or address issues like duplication of resources and materials. If the problem noted had also been addressed in previous projects, the needs assessment can help to identify reasons for the past failures and avoid them. Overall, needs evaluation in project management in healthcare because it helps in aspects such as decision-making processes.

Reference

PEYKARI, N., OWLIA, P., MALEKAFZALI, H., GHANEI, M., BABAMAHMOODI, A., & DJALALINIA, S. (2013, February 1). Needs assessment in health research projects: A new approach to project management in Iran. PubMed Central (PMC). Retrieved April 6, 2020, from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3595647/