Go live isn’t a deployment; it’s a hospital learning a new lullaby to soothe its patients.
There is a hush the day before a go-live: cables taped, printers aligned, and staff badges blinking with new access. For weeks the hospital has rehearsed this moment checklists, training sprints, late-night build calls but the rehearsal is not ready. Real readiness is the moment a scared family member hears the right answer without a clinician fumbling, and that only happens when people and systems finally sing in the same key.
At St. Clement’s, the first go-live wasn’t a headline; it was a lullaby. On Day One, a pediatric nurse named Marisol found that the new medication reconciliation screen finally put allergy flags beside the order. No more cross checking paper lists. She breathed, and for the first time that week, she sat with a mother long enough to answer a question about feeding, rather than chase a chart.
Go lives are noisy, but they should leave patients in a calm. That’s the lullaby: routines that protect care, interfaces that support bedside work, and leadership that sings the same tune in every hallway.
What made that lullaby possible
- Pre go live rehearsals that included patients. Scripts, role plays, and simulated family calls.
- Clinician champions on every shift. Trusted colleagues who answer “how,” not just “what.”
- A staffed command center, not a control room. People available to fix workflow problems in real time, not just technical bugs.
- Minimum viable scope at launch. Start with the workflows that move the most care, not every feature in the sprint backlog.
Quick checklist
- Run bedside simulations with representative staff one week before golive.
- Publish a one-page “what to expect” for families and frontline staff.
- Have a visible escalation path mapped to real people (names, not titles).
- Schedule celebration moments to recognize the fatigue and the courage shown.
When systems finally sing with humans, the lullaby is simple: it returns attention to the patient. That is the score by which all go-lives must be judged.