With any major decision, having the right representation is critical – even when the decision seems like an obvious one, said Rich Rogers, CIO at Prisma Health, in this interview. “You have to make sure you have a number of folks represented who voice that same opinion.”
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Key Takeaways
- To be successful, vendor partnerships need to go beyond purchasing a product and supporting it. “It’s about how do you help our business and help us take care of our populations better.”
- The talent war is becoming increasingly intense. For leaders, it means learning what motivates individuals and getting them involved in the right projects “so that they feel fulfilled.”
- After the merger that created Prisma Health, the next step was to “create one IT organization,” which meant building the right teams and making “difficult decisions.”
- One of the most important qualities in future leaders? The ability to “manage other people, treat them with respect, and be able to deliver business results.”
Q&A with Rich Rogers, Part 2 [To view Part 1, click here.]
Gamble: Has your approach to vendor relationships evolved over the years or have you had pretty much the same strategy?
Rogers: We’ve always tried to maintain good relationships with our vendors, but this is a little bit different because it takes it a step further. It goes beyond purchasing the product and supporting it. It’s about how do you help our business and help us take care of our populations better collectively? It takes a step beyond that and it supports our transition to a value-based care model as well for the populations we serve. And so, it has gone beyond the traditional relationships we’ve had in the past.
Gamble: You talked earlier about innovative initiatives. I would imagine that’s key in being able to retain good people.
Rogers: There’s a talent war out there. You have to find what motivates your individuals and get them involved in the right projects so that they feel fulfilled and can grow. It has definitely helped from that perspective in terms of getting involved with some of the projects with Siemens.
Gamble: You’ve also done some work with Phillips around enterprise imaging, which is something we’re starting to see get picked back up again. Can you talk about what you’re doing in that area?
Rogers: Phillips is another one of our strategic partners. We’re standardizing on their patient monitoring system throughout our health system. That puts us in a position to do some creative things on the nursing side such as central monitoring and other tools that can help combat the nursing shortage.
From an imaging standpoint, Phillips is implementing their enterprise imaging and PACS solution across our enterprise. As part of that, we brought together three distinct radiology groups. We had one PACS system upstate, and another four or five across the Midlands. Now we’re consolidating to one for the entire health system — one consistent image sharing solution, one VNA, etc.
That helps drive our strategy of having a few core systems and leveraging them as much as possible to standardize our care processes across the health system. It’s the final piece we needed to support our overall IT strategy. So those are the main components right now.
We’re also talking with Phillips about using virtual care center assistance where we’re monitoring not just inpatients, but also remote patients who are part of our clinically integrated network, so that we can alert their care managers when necessary. That’s part of what we’re doing there. As you can see, we’re working with different partners in different ways.
Gamble: Right. And we’ve touched on this already, but that seems like another example of how important vendor relationships are. As a CIO, I would think it’s critical to be able to advocate for what you need.
Rogers: Absolutely. We definitely have a say in what goes into product design, development, and implementation. And if they’re thinking about something and want to try it out, we’re a good test bed in certain cases. There are mutual benefits.
Gamble: Sure. So, I’d like to talk a bit about what it was like from your standpoint when the merger happened, and you were named CIO of Prisma Health. What was your approach there?
Rogers: It’s all based on strategy and what we had to get done. Part of our organizational strategy was to consolidate corporate functions fairly quickly, which enabled other areas to consolidate in many cases. And so, we had to move fast.
Part of that is evaluating the skill sets you’ve inherited and how people can fit into that structure. In our case, we were going to implement Epic, and so, people had to apply to be part of that Epic project team. We had folks who went through the assessment test and met the grade on that, and so we filled that team.
Then, we looked at what we had left to support the legacy systems that continue to run our businesses until they’re replaced. And so, we made the decision to outsource that staff and those functions, because I didn’t want to recruit for systems that we were going to replace. We outsourced some individuals and maintained that arrangement until we got through the migration and the rest of the folks were incorporated into our current staff to create one IT organization. And we did that fairly rapidly.
That’s been in place for a few years now. It worked its way out. There were definitely some emotional moments and some difficult decisions that had to be made, but we worked our way through it. Now we have a high performing team; I’m really proud of them and what they’ve accomplished.
Gamble: So it was important to establish one IT organization and really create a culture around Prisma — not Greenville and Palmetto.
Rogers: Yes. You don’t mention the old names. You make sure they’re removed from every system that you current you have — it’s amazing how many places it shows up. One of the positives that came out of the pandemic was virtual meetings becoming commonplace. And so, we didn’t have to drive a hundred miles back and forth to meet people and get to know them. That helped facilitate the development of our culture as one organization.
Gamble: Interesting. I wanted to talk about leadership and what it takes to build future leaders. What are the characteristics you find to be most important? What do you look for?
Rogers: I look for people who can work independently; people who are smart and who make the people who work for them better by giving them the tools they need. I think the key is being able to articulate the vision — what we need to do — and having people in place who can deliver those results.
You need to measure that, and do it consistently throughout your organization. The ones who get it and can deliver will rise to the top, and you need to make sure you continue to grow those folks. There are some people who won’t make it, but not it won’t be too many, as long as you do well with the hiring process.
I think it really comes down to finding people who can manage other people, treat them with respect, and be able to deliver business results. They’re the ones who are going to continue to grow in our organization.
Gamble: You mentioned measuring — do you use certain metrics to make sure people are reaching goals? How is that done?
Rogers: We measure everything. Like a lot of organizations, most of our analysts are working remotely. That puts a tremendous burden on the managers, because they still need to hold people accountable; they need to figure out how to manage and measure productivity with their staff.
And it’s something they need to figure out. I don’t dictate how each of them should do that. They develop their own methods; I just need to know that they’re hitting their dates and deliver results in terms of employee engagement and other scores. That’s what we do; we don’t micromanage.
Gamble: That’s a good thing, for sure. Well, I really want to thank you for your time. It’s been great getting to know you and learn what the organization is doing. Thanks so much.
Rogers: Absolutely. It was a pleasure.
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