Like many rural systems, Centra Health serves a large geographic area — which requires supporting physician practices with different needs and expectations. It’s a challenge that Ben Clark, VP/CIO, welcomes with open arms. Now in his ninth year as the head of IT, Clark has spent a total of 23 years at Centra, a nonprofit system that includes three hospitals, as well as health and rehabilitation centers, a regional cancer center, and physician practices. In this interview, he talks about being a McKesson shop surrounded by Epic organizations, the importance of staying ahead in terms of Meaningful Use, balancing the needs of different specialties, and the challenges that both his team and physicians face in connecting the continuum of care.
Chapter 4
- Measuring up to Meaningful Use
- Avoiding staff overload — “The teams are stressed”
- 30 years at Centra
- Learning from a great manager
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Bold Statements
I do believe, judging from the work we’ve done to get through this year, that if the purpose of the program from CMS for Meaningful Use is to make sure that the top 1% of health systems in the nation get a payout and everybody else cannot do it, then they need to go ahead and throw Stage 2 into place.
When you talk about Meaningful Use and ICD-10 and health care reform, we’ve got this big attention deficit. Everybody’s focusing on a lot of things and sometimes nothing happens when that occurs.
We definitely are struggling with how to make people take time off when they should. What I have with this team is just a bunch of extremely dedicated and driven individuals. They’re self-motivated and they’re wonderful people to have working for you, but my job is as much about encouraging them to leave as it is to keep them working.
The key to leadership is in building consensus, gaining support, and finding the right solution as a team, because then you have everybody supporting you when you hit it. You’re not going to have your legs cut off from under you because your team just doesn’t support the decision that was made.
You have to be fortunate enough to have a thinking administration that understands IT is integral and a major part of any project that comes down the pike.
Guerra: Before, when we were talking about being able to handle all of the projects, you said that you had finished Meaningful Use Stage 1, and I guess you had somewhat of a breather.
Clark: Three days.
Guerra: What are your thoughts on Stage 2? Have you looked at what’s crystallizing around Stage 2, and what do you think about it?
Clark: I’m glad to hear that at Stage 1, hopefully you have an extra year for it. I’m so confident in my team here, and after the support we received from McKesson, I’m pretty confident with McKesson that we would be ready for Stage 2 whenever CMS chose to make it happen. But I do believe, judging from the work we’ve done to get through this year, that if the purpose of the program from CMS for Meaningful Use is to make sure that the top 1% of health systems in the nation get a payout and everybody else cannot do it, then they need to go ahead and throw Stage 2 into place. But if the purpose of the program is something different, they need to give organizations that haven’t been quite as active as we have the ability to get that work done. So I think they need to delay that stuff.
Guerra: Do you think it’s just too much? There are just too many things?
Clark: When you talk about Meaningful Use and ICD-10 and health care reform, we’ve got this big attention deficit. Everybody’s focusing on a lot of things and sometimes nothing happens when that occurs.
Guerra: Right, so that would be your advice to CMS—to slow down a little bit?
Clark: Yes. I believe that my organization is capable of reacting and will react and respond to whatever CMS puts our way, but that doesn’t take attention away from other key projects and things that we would like to do.
Guerra: You mention your team and your confidence in them. As we all know, there’s a big workforce shortage among people with clinical IT experience. I’ve spoken to a lot of CIOs who say their staff is working beyond capacity hours, they’re stressed out—it’s one thing after another. Someone said to me that they definitely thought they were going to lose good people just because they were working them too hard. Do you see the same situation out there, and as a CIO, how do you manage the workload while preventing your staff from burning out?
Clark: If I had the answer to that question, I probably would be writing books and talking circuits. Every year, you do sit back and say, ‘Well, it can’t be as busy next year as it was this year,’ and then, doggone if it’s not even busier. I enjoy a couple of things in my environment. Lynchburg does not have a high turnover, so I have a very stable workforce that I’ve learned to trust and support more than lead, and that has served us very well. We’ve had a very low turnover rate, which is a good thing because if I had openings, I don’t know how we’d fill them because Lynchburg does not have a large technology pool to draw from.
But having said that, the teams are stressed. They are working harder, and you try to do for them as much as you can. We definitely are struggling with how to make people take time off when they should. What I have with this team is just a bunch of extremely dedicated and driven individuals. They’re self-motivated and they’re wonderful people to have working for you, but my job is as much about encouraging them to leave as it is to keep them working.
Guerra: That was extremely well said. On your LinkedIn profile, there’s one recommendation and there were two things in there that caught my eye. One is the word ‘caring’ was used to describe you. Does it affect you personally when you see people stressed out and you’re not able to give them the break you want to?
Clark: Absolutely. We try to feed people and we try to encourage them with fun things—joking around and doing crazy things—because the one thing I’ve learned is that my team is the busiest team at Centra. But don’t tell that to any other executives, because they’ve got busy teams too, and those other executives are going to say their team is the busiest, and I would say that in their mind, they are right. IT does not hold the torch for the busiest group in health care. We are all busy. Everybody is working harder. Everybody is trying to improve performance and improve customer satisfaction and patient satisfaction, and we’re all sharing in the pain of just trying to do better and better.
Guerra: There was one other phrase I want to run by you which was interesting in that recommendation. The person wrote that they’ve never seen you turn away from an issue. What do you think that means?
Clark: I think that my basic philosophy is that we’ve got to talk through whatever is going on—however hard it is or how easy it is. So I try to be collaborative; I try to be inclusive and bring people in, and I do try for group consensus. And I think that most of the time, we get there. But sometimes, you’ve got to be an Indian and sometimes you’ve got to be the chief, and I’m not afraid to do both. I need to do both—that’s what a CIO does.
Guerra: They say they’re paying you the big bucks to make the big decisions, right?
Clark: That’s right, but the key is not to be out there on your own. I think the key to leadership is in building consensus, gaining support, and finding the right solution as a team, because then you have everybody supporting you when you hit it. You’re not going to have your legs cut off from under you because your team just doesn’t support the decision that was made.
Guerra: Right. So you’ve been over there for 14 years?
Clark: Ten years as CIO. I’ve been at Centra now for 30 years.
Guerra: Thirty years? Wow, I must have misread your profile. I thought 14, but 30 years at one organization. Now that is interesting. What keeps you there for 30 years? What keeps someone anywhere for 30 years?
Clark: That’s a good question. I’m not from Lynchburg. I would have to say that our retiring CEO, George Dawson, is who kept me here. I have had several occasions through the years to take opportunities elsewhere, and as my interest and my career grew and my desire for other things grew, Centra grew with me. When I started, there was no Centra Health—it was Virginia Baptist Hospital. And when Centra Health came in, I got a promotion, and George Dawson has just always encouraged me and kept challenging me in my career and made the job stay fresh and interesting. You blink your eyes and it’s been 30 years. It’s amazing.
Guerra: I would imagine your phone’s been ringing more or will be ringing more with offers with what’s going on these days.
Clark: Maybe it’ll ring.
Guerra: But you’re still staying in Lynchburg?
Clark: I’m happy in Lynchburg, and we’re not finished yet.
Guerra: You mentioned your CEO and how great he’s been for your career. Did you take a lot of what you learned from him, and that’s how you’ve managed?
Clark: I have. He definitely would teach the ideas of inclusion and collaboration and making the tough decisions with consensus. He also mentored me here for the last 10 years. As CIO I’ve reported to him directly, and watching him work has been a real joy. He started six months after I did.
Guerra: Wow, 30 years ago.
Clark: Thirty years ago. I guess you could say we’ve grown up together. While I did not report to him a large part of that time, he definitely stepped in and intervened on a couple occasions when I was being lured away with other opportunities.
Guerra: Well, that’s about what I have for you, Ben. Before I let you go, I want to give you an opportunity to either bring up another important project that we haven’t discussed or any thoughts you have on any trends or advice for your colleagues in closing.
Clark: This is probably where I should have had some prepared words.
Guerra: Whatever comes naturally.
Clark: I think the challenge for all of us is how we squeeze the funnel to slow things down without putting so much pressure on the backend that something pops. I think that’s what gets a lot of CIOs in trouble—that the work has to be squeezed in such a way that the other executives get frustrated and start grousing. I think my success—what I would like to think has been a large part of it—is around our IT governance structure. How we govern these processes, including having the CEO engaged with that on a pretty frequent basis, is the way we’ve been successful. I think that’s a reproducible way of going at it. I also think you have to be fortunate enough to have a thinking administration that understands IT is integral and a major part of any project that comes down the pike. So I can speak to ICD-10 or I can speak to Meaningful Use, but it’s the little things—are you included in with the next physician acquisition? We’ve got an inn that we’re building, our first hotel, where IT is included in that. So that’s all, I would say. I appreciate the opportunity to chat with you.
Guerra: This was a real pleasure, Ben. I want to thank you again for your time and I look forward to talking to you again in the future.
Clark: Thank you.
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