As I participated virtually in the CHIME CIO Spring Forum, I asked a bunch of people to share their thoughts on the following question:
“What’s one thing healthcare CIOs should be thinking about right now and why? And what’s a practical step they can take?”
No surprise, I got a wide variety of answers which I think could be helpful for CIOs to consider in the context of their own organization. Here’s a roundup of the various responses I received:
CIOs Should Consider What Strategic Initiatives They Should Proactively Accelerate Coming Out of the Pandemic and Being Able to Compete with New Entrants
Ed Gaudet, CEO & Founder at Censinet, said, “CIOs must consider the learnings from the pandemic. We accelerated strategic initiatives such as telehealth and work from home. But these “happened” to us. CIOs must consider accelerated strategic initiatives proactively, specifically how do we reimagine care – in the same way work will be different – in a way that keeps our health system relevant over the next decade and enables us to stay ahead of what Amazon will do. I just asked this question in a breakout and one of the CIOs suggested what Amazon is doing in healthcare is only with their employees. Amazon aggressively tests markets before they go all in. They have been testing healthcare over the last few years. While they will start with their employee base, they have 1.3 MILLION EMPLOYEES!! This is larger than most healthcare systems patient populations.”
Focus on Your Mid-to-Long Term Talent Strategy
Geoff Blanding, VP of Optimum CareerPath, Implementation, and Managed Services at Optimum Healthcare IT said, “Focusing on your mid-to-long-term talent strategy is more critical than ever for healthcare IT leaders. The swift response from IT departments to support remote work, pandemic response, and all the changes over the past year has proven IT projects’ ability to happen fast when necessary and has set the bar high for swift, agile IT execution going forward. At the same time, IT budgets continue to feel pressure, and many organizations are already dealing with attrition issues that will likely worsen with coming retirements. Layer on top of that the war for talent around scarce technology resources like cloud, analytics, or Epic. IT leaders must start to future-proof their team structure, recruitment strategy, and internal training processes. The practical step I would take is to look at your open positions, whether that’s net new positions or replacing attrition, and focus on where well-trained entry-level employees will fit. The more you do that, the more you can start to bring your costs down, bring in and build the leaders of tomorrow, and focus on culture.”
Take Advantage of Digital Adoption Being at an All Time High
Tom Stafford, Healthcare Chief Technology Officer at CDW Healthcare said, “How they are going to continue to introduce digital tools and processes into the caregivers hands. Adoption is at an all time high, all CIOs need to take advantage of this. Assess your existing virtual care and clinical mobility & collaboration solutions. Transform them to work efficiently and reliably for your caregivers. Caregivers will be more trusting in them and that will allow for further digital adoption.”
Look At What is Needed to Protect Providers at the Point of Care
Mark A. Masters, PhD, President & CEO at MDabstract said, “It is fascinating to see the pace of change in Healthcare! The need for the marrying of innovation with the mission of patient care really stood out. MDabstract is dedicated to protecting Providers at the point of care and I think this should be a priority for every CIO as we migrate these changes. Whatever innovations are put in place should further the mission of clinicians delivering exceptional patient care. Continue to work closely with Physician Leadership as we introduce innovation that will change workflow and clinical processes. This will help reduce the risk that we inadvertently create situations where Providers don’t have access to the clinical data they need to treat their patients.”
Look at How You Can Optimize Your Processes, Workflows, and New Applications
Dessiree Paoli, MBA, Sr Solution Manager at Interlace Health said, “I think that everyone had to move quickly in 2020 to set up new technologies (like telehealth) and now that those are up and running, I think CIOs should be thinking about the full process and workflow of those new applications. Everyone was in emergency mode getting things going, but now it is time to ensure optimal efficiencies for staff and patients. Talking to those staff and patients and asking for feedback around how things can improve seems to be a practical next step towards improvement. Implementing solutions that are fully digital and integrate seamlessly with their EHRs, to reduce added process burden for staff seems to be effective. Working with state/local governments to ensure equal access to virtual care for all patients in their care areas, even those in rural areas without consistent access to WIFI.”
What Are New Ways We Could Solve Problems and What Does A Valuable Partner Look Like?
Jonathan Fritz, Chief Innovation Officer at CHIME said, “Healthcare leaders must be open to solving problems in different ways; change in digital health is only accelerating. This necessitates a broader view of what a valuable “partner” looks like. It includes VCs as co-creation partners, emerging companies as solution allies, and a more expansive innovation toolset. The leaders need a trusted team member who intimately understands the differences and can navigate a path forward for real value creation.”
Work on Legacy Technologies Including Possibly Moving Them to an Active Archive
Shannon Larkin, VP Marketing at Harmony Healthcare IT said, “As healthcare is under attack, CIOs should address cybersecurity by reducing legacy technology vulnerabilities. HIMSS reported that the average health system has 18 different EMR vendors across its inpatient and outpatient settings. Reducing that footprint to a go-forward platform and an active archive in a HITRUST CSF®-certified environment is a smart step.”
Understand and Manage Risk Associated with Cross-Contamination from Shared Devices
Norman Horn, Ph.D., Chemical Engineer at Seal Shield said, “With the ever-increasing use of connected mobile devices in hospitals, CIOs should be cognizant of how these shared devices contribute to cross-contamination and the spread of dangerous pathogens to patients. They should consider promoting the adoption of advanced disinfection protocols and compliance to improve staff safety and patient outcomes. They further need to realize how the prevention of healthcare-acquired infections (HAIs) ultimately contributes to their enterprise’s profitability. An easy step to take here is to leverage new technologies such as Seal Shield’s ElectroClave™ UV-C disinfection system that contributes to a safer and more hygienic hospital environment.”
Create a Stronger Focus on Patient Education and Enablement. Review Your Communication Efforts to Ensure Priorities Are Aligned and Projects Are on Schedule
Joncé Smith, Vice President of Revenue Cycle Management at Stoltenberg Consulting said, “There needs to be a stronger focus on patient education and enablement. Patients now have access to their data, but do they know what to do with it? We need to better package patient engagement in a way that is more transparent and enables the human experience. There’s a completely different approach to knowledge transfer when trying to help a mother of four serving as the care coordinator not only for her immediate family, but also for her elderly parents, than there is to a health system clinician. End-user support needs to evolve to a true education standpoint.
Additionally, with the turbulence of COVID-19 and aftermath strategy, CIOs need to review their current list of projects and determine if priorities have changed. Flexibility, creativity and communication are key CIO considerations to keep projects moving successfully forward through this summer and into the fall. Consider if modifying current communication styles can help get goals accomplished. Tips for this? One word – huddles. Often overlooked, this is especially important as many organizations are working with remote staff in some capacity. Morning and afternoon huddles allot specific time to focus team resources on issues identified in work sprints and discuss emerging barriers, while quickly assessing status of various project initiatives and resetting priorities where needed. This is not a management meeting. The idea is to foster ownership at the team level which will prove invaluable to get project work done on time and within budget.”
Thanks to everyone who participated. What do you think of these suggestions? How would you answer these two questions?
It is interesting that there are no comments by sitting CIOs or CMIOs. Should one be nervous about a bunch of vendors telling us what and how we should accelerate? Are the recommendations thoughtfully crafted for the benefit or healthcare or of their own company’s sales forecasts?
Hi Bill,
We have a lot of insights from CIOs on our CIO podcast: https://www.healthcareittoday.com/category/healthcare-cio-podcasts So, if you prefer CIOs, you can listen there.
As far as vendors, I think CIOs are smart enough to look at what the vendor is sharing above and decide if it’s something that would be a helpful perspective or not. I’ve often found that vendors talk to hundreds of CIOs and can offer a unique perspective across those they see being most successful.