SI 2019 CIO Roundtable

During the 26^th SI Annual Conference twenty CIOs met to network and share ideas and insights regarding: efforts underway to reduce the cognitive burden of the EMR; paving the way for increased consumerization of healthcare delivery; and extending the ways SI CIOs can offer advice to “next generation” IT and executive leadership. The group of CIOs split into small groups to dive into several different topics and yield insights shared with the larger group.

Reducing the Cognitive Burden of the EMR

Many of the CIOs acknowledged this was a “self-inflicted problem” for the industry as a result of the HITECH Act and the resulting rapid and widespread implementation of electronic health records to facilitate cross-enterprise data sharing. Furthermore, patients increasingly seek care across multiple care settings which creates even more pressure on providers to effectively share and utilize information from multiple platforms.

Currently health systems are using a wide variety of tools to measure clinical adoption and satisfaction, and to customize training programs to address EMR usability, personalization, and standardization. Stanford’s “Home for Dinner” program has been successfully copied across the membership with a focus on reducing the documentation burden. The use of EMR-specific metrics to track documentation time, and the deployment of physician builder/accelerators as a key resource to finetune the EMR is in widespread use. Other key solutions: use nurses as educators, conduct regular training teleconferences for continuous improvement, focus on “alarms management” and continually educate on how alerts are used, set realistic expectations and make improvements quickly to address ease of use, and incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) to continually refine alerts and alarms as effective “guardrails” for best practice adherence.

Supporting the Digital/Consumer Health Strategy

Clearly “digital” and “consumer” terminology varies widely by health system, depending who is driving the business model evolution, however, it represents an opportunity to do things differently, and brings a focus with fresh eyes on how to make care more convenient for today’s healthcare consumer. The CIOs acknowledged that “digital” sits on top of an IT platform (as compared to “intelligence” which is embedded) and few organizations feel they can easily “plug in” the consumer apps quickly. However, they also acknowledged that the “digital hurricane” is picking up speed and accelerating the pace of innovation, comfort with change, and redefinition of the care delivery model.  The CIOs also widely acknowledged that digital transformation is a culture change and it entails broad participation across the organization, including marketing, strategy, clinical operations, and IT.

Leveraging CIO Expertise Across the SI Community

This discussion focused on the huge amount of legacy knowledge among SI C-Suite healthcare executives, including CIOs, and how the SI community can best be leveraged to serve “next generation” leaders, whether they are new/emerging CIOs, CEOs, other IT-centric C-level roles or Board members. The CIOs brainstormed about ways of serving as a talent pool for Board education programs, peer support for new CIOs, or serving as “change management” sounding board coaches as CIOs take on large-scale cultural change projects.  This would not be meant to translate into a formal program or long-term coaching support, but more of an informal network of resources to help support one another, as first-time CIOs or CEOs, new-to-healthcare C-Suite executives, or new enterprise-level C-suite roles.

About the Sponsors

The Scottsdale Institute (SI) is a not-for-profit membership organization of prominent healthcare systems whose goal is to support our members as they strive to achieve clinical integration and transformation through information technology (IT). SI facilitates knowledge sharing by providing intimate and informal forums that embrace SI’s “Three Pillars:”

> Collaboration
> Education
> Networking

SI Affinity Groups offer a popular way to focus on a shared issue, topic or collective challenges. They can be title-specific or a mix of executive titles focused on single issues like Digital and Population Health, Innovation, Cybersecurity, Clinical Decision Support, Data and Analytics and others. Affinity Groups convene in a variety of ways including Dialogues, Summits, Ad Hoc Queries, Site Visits and Roundtables.

Impact Advisors is a nationally recognized healthcare consulting firm that is solving some of the toughest challenges in the industry by delivering strategic advisory, technology implementation and performance improvement services. Our comprehensive suite of digital health, clinical optimization and revenue cycle services span the lifecycle of our clients’ needs. Our experienced team has a powerful combination of clinical, revenue, operations, consulting and IT experience. The firm has earned a number of prestigious industry and workplace awards including Best in KLAS® for nine consecutive years, Healthcare Informatics HCI 100, Crain’s Chicago Business Fast Fifty, as well as “best place to work” awards from: Modern Healthcare, Consulting Magazine, Becker’s Hospital Review and Achievers.

For more information visit:

www.impact-advisors.com

Not pictured: Dwayne McNeil, AVP, Information & Analytics Services at Atrium Health

Dave Bensema Bill Hudson Tricia Julian Ken Lawonn Ken Lee Ken Letkeman Jonathan L. Manis Jonathan Manis Jon Manis Kathryn McClellan Patrick J. O’Hare Patrick O’Hare Andrew Rosenberg Bill Russell Marcus B. Shipley Marcus Shipley Mary Alice (Annecharico) Simpson Mary Alice Annecharico Patricia C. Skarulis Patricia Skarulis Bruce D. Smith Bruce Smith Tim Thompson Jim Veline Joel L. Vengco Joel Vengco Eric Yablonka Dwayne McNeil Todd Hollowell Andrew Smith Peter Smith