Creating a unified
“One MGB” experience

Mass General Brigham’s (MGB) rich history began over 200 years ago with the establishment of Massachusetts General Hospital and continued when the health system was founded by Mass General and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in 1994. Over the years, the hospital network has expanded to encompass 16 member institutions, more than 80,000 employees, and $2 billion in research activities. MGB institutions excel in patient care, research, discovery, training, and education. They offer a broad range of healthcare services across multiple disciplines and specialties, covering the entire spectrum of clinical care needs.

The group’s growth in recent decades brought with it certain challenges common to networked organizations of its size. MGB member hospitals were operating largely independently, with staff identifying more with their own institutions rather than as members of “One MGB.” This isolation came through in the way information was being shared and communicated.

“There were multiple sites and an enormous disparity,” recalls Carolyn Miga, Director, Workplace Productivity, MGB Digital. “Depending on your role and responsibility within the organization, the path to finding the right information might have been straightforward, or it could have been really complicated—and honestly frustrating.” The lack of group-wide oversight meant that information was not always being managed as effectively as possible, often resulting in missing, duplicate, and/or outdated information across multiple hospital sites.

To help break down the barriers, MGB leadership has undertaken a transformation that started with a new enterprise-wide intranet—aptly named Vitals—that would embody its vision of One MGB. “The biggest driver for the project was to get everybody onto a single platform using the same solution with the same appearance and experience for all of our employees across the board,” says Laurie Hassan, CIO, Mass General Brigham Medical Group and Community Physicians. 

To this end, the organization opted for a Microsoft SharePoint solution to maximize interoperability with its existing Microsoft technologies as well as solutions like ServiceNow and HealthStream. SharePoint would also create a solid foundation for any needs the group might have in the future. 

MGB enlisted Slalom’s help to drive the project forward. “Slalom really painted a vision for us that was tangible; we could see where they were going to take us on this journey,” explains Miga. “They considered our resources, the volume of work, and our desired time frame and didn’t overpromise, but still managed to deliver features they knew would really excite our employees.”

The teams kicked off the project by conducting stakeholder interviews with a cross-section from each business unit. This helped to zero in on common themes and challenges. By working with MGB to set up governance for Vitals, Slalom ensured that as many voices as possible were heard when designing the experience. 

With this input from member hospitals, the teams set out to architect Vitals in a way that would satisfy their requirements. This included setting up a logical navigation framework and site structure with information in one cohesive system to help employees find what they needed faster and easier. By using mostly out-of-the-box SharePoint functionality, Slalom and MGB created a solution that would also be easier for Miga’s staff to maintain once the rollout was complete.

As the phased rollout was conducted over the span of about a year, communication was key to the success of the project. Michael Hebner, senior delivery principal in Slalom’s Boston office, explains his team’s approach: “We were very cognizant of the impact this project would have across the user base, so working with MGB around when and how each hospital would make the move to Vitals was done in a very thoughtful way to minimize the burden that often comes with change of this magnitude.”

Thanks to these efforts, MGB was able to find the best way to inform its staff of the upcoming changes. “Slalom helped us develop robust and effective training and communications plans,” says Anna Moran, Director, Internal Communications at MGB. “As part of this project, we created an integrated communications plan for the entire healthcare system that can serve as a model for us with other major projects moving forward.”

Just shy of two years from the project’s kickoff date, all 16 hospitals were successfully moved to Vitals and are experiencing the benefits of a single source for much of their key information. 

From a user standpoint, the response has been overwhelmingly positive. “Everybody's mindset has changed to Vitals now being the first place people are going to look for information,” says Hassan. “We've also got a long list of people wanting to get their information on Vitals, because it's really being looked at as our one-stop shop.”

MGB has also been able to realize cost savings from the project. “We've sunset some of our legacy systems,” notes Hassan, “and with a small SharePoint team handling maintenance and keeping Vitals up to date, we’ve really decreased our cost from an overall maintenance perspective.”

On the technical and execution side, there’s also been reason to celebrate. “We actually finished the project on time, so Slalom definitely did a great job keeping us on task,” says Hassan. “But we also really valued the collaboration. They listened to what we had to say—even when I would push back on conversations, they would listen.”

“It took communication, it took coordination—the MGB folks had different roles and responsibilities, but it was really Slalom that helped stitch us all together and keep us moving forward,” says Miga. “Mike and the team had a vested interest in our success, and that came through loud and clear. I've never seen another vendor make the extra effort Slalom did to ensure the knowledge transfer but also to validate that the subject matter experts on the MGB side were absorbing that information and felt as confident as they needed to be to carry that torch forward when Slalom’s work was done.” 

What does the future hold for MGB and Vitals? Not every department was part of the initial project, so there’s still some work to be done. “Eventually the goal is to have one pharmacy site, one emergency preparedness site, etc. at the enterprise level on Vitals,” states Hassan. “We see Vitals as something that’s going to evolve, so it's going to continue to help us in our transformation journey. It's just one of the tools in that process.”

According to Moran, “We will continue streamlining our communications across the enterprise, because we know our employees are busy doing the things that matter most:  they're providing compassionate and skilled patient care, discovering key breakthroughs, educating the next generation of healthcare professionals, and supporting our communities. Now that we’re all under one enterprise umbrella, we really want to lean into being a Vitals first, Vitals forward organization.”