That’s the vision of the University of Vermont Health Network (UVMHN) where I’m currently serving as the interim Chief Technology Officer. It’s a simple but powerful statement and a great reminder of the 
importance of “we” and the work we do together. With our major Epic go live less than two months away, we are constantly reminded what a critical foundational piece the common, integrated EHR is for the health network. No pressure!
I described the scope of our Epic project in my post “Crunch time and why IT matters” and shared stories from our 90-day Go Live Readiness Assessment (GLRA) in my post “IT takes a village”. Our 60-day GLRA was a few days ago. Dr. John Brumsted, UVMHN CEO, and the presidents from the hospitals and the medical group kicked off the day thanking everyone involved and describing what the common, integrated EHR will mean for our patients. And as Dr. Brumsted noted, the Epic project is the biggest undertaking to date for the organization as an integrated network.
UVMHN is not the first nor the last organization on the journey to create an integrated care delivery system to serve the patients in a region. To be a truly integrated network, common values and strong relationships are key.
Why we do what do and how we do it is reflected in our IT guiding principles. These principles help ground us as IT professionals in support of our evolving health network:
- Care for patients and their families is our first priority
- Contribute by enabling the Health Network vision and strategy
- Relate by building lasting relationships with each other and our community
- Lead by example
- Simplify by making IT easy, understandable and by relentlessly reducing complexity
- Communicate openly, effectively and often
- Invest in yourself, the team and our services
- Deliver by taking responsibility and holding ourselves and each other accountable
Two years ago, I served as interim CIO at Stony Brook Medicine where I also saw the importance of culture and relationships in mergers. The post I wrote then is still relevant two years later and worth revisiting – “Culture matters in mergers”. Busy as we all are these days, we can’t forget the importance of building and nurturing strong relationships and working as one team.
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Merger mania – is it good for the patient?
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