On Best Practices

“We’re at meeting norms”

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That’s a new phrase for me. One I’m still getting used to at my current interim engagement in IT at the University of Vermont Health Network. Said like that, it means it’s 10 minutes to the hour and time to wrap canstockphoto15517676 (1) meeting normsup the meeting. Time for people to shut down any video conferencing, clear the room, take a bio-break and get to their next meeting. And for others to come in and get set up for the next meeting to start right on time. And start on time they do.

This is a meeting discipline that makes a lot of sense and everyone seems to have adapted to it. As the new outsider, I’m still getting used to it and trying my best to conform. Get there on time and if chairing the meeting, wrap up by 10 minutes to the hour (5 minutes if it’s a 30-minute meeting).

Other meeting norms the IT department has established include all agendas and meeting materials available in advance as part of the meeting invite, not sent around separately as emails with attachments. I was told early on that if a meeting doesn’t have an agenda, you’re free to not attend the meeting. While I’ve seen no specific guideline on this, I wouldn’t be surprised. Another way to ensure meetings have purpose and a plan for the time. Continue reading →

Good email practices – lead by example

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Have you ever gone through hundreds of email post vacation trying to catch up and found too many branches on one subject making it difficult to quickly get the full picture on that issue? canstockphoto17451721 (1) email

Have you ever read through a long email trail when you are in a new organization and many different people are weighing in – you don’t know who they are or what they do because there are no signatures, just a first name?

Have you ever had that sense that too much project management is happening via email?

Have you ever tried to find an email but there is no subject or useful subject to search on?

Have you ever lost the thread because the email trail is now on an entirely different topic but still carries the original unrelated subject line?

Have you ever looked at an email trail and wondered why someone doesn’t just pick up the phone or do a quick huddle with the right people to resolve the issue?

If the answer to any of these questions are “yes”, you may share some of my frustrations with managing email.

So, what do we do? Complain or lead by example? Continue reading →

Vacation season – make the most of it!

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We’re heading into the July 4th weekend and summer is already a third over. Hopefully you have made plans for a break of some sort with family or friends in the next few months. My colleagues in Vermont say canstockphoto21032568 (1) red white blue chairsJuly is the most popular time for vacations since it’s the only nice month of the year. Those of us in the northern parts of the country truly do appreciate our precious few summer months.

Remember the 6 R’s of summer – rest, relax, refresh, renew, reflect and reboot. And if you have to work or keep in touch with work while you take a break – check out “4 tips when you must work on vacation”.

Happy 4th of July to all!  Enjoy the rest of your summer and try not to think about when the first snowfall will happen. It’s still a long way off!

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Good intentions – a midyear checkup

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Remember those things called New Year’s resolutions? Do you make them? Do they last past January? At the start of 2019, I stepped back and did some soul searching (sounds deeper than it was!) and came canstockphoto9123549 (1) calendarup with three broad “intentions” rather than resolutions. They are balance, passion, and engagement.

By balance I wanted to figure out how to make my goal of working closer to three quarters time rather than full-time a reality. Being two plus years into our business, StarBridge Advisors, I was working much more than I initially intended. One of my goals when I stepped off the permanent CIO track in early 2016 was to have more flexibility in my career and work more like three quarters time over the course of the year. When I do an interim engagement, it is obviously a full-time commitment but then there are breaks in between.

So, in January, I decided I would be more intentional about scheduling down time. A great way to do that each week was to block off Tuesdays when I could and spend them with my daughter and two grandkids as that was her day off each week as a nurse practitioner. We had many fun Tuesdays together.

Since I said “yes” to another interim engagement in May it’s been more like having two full-time jobs considering how busy StarBridge Advisors is these days. Evenings and weekends are very full to say the least. A good problem to have for anyone with their own business! But I need to get back to a better balance during this period. It’s a work in process for sure. But I am loving the work I’m doing these days and the people I’m working with.

By passion I wanted to focus some time on developing next generation leaders which has long been a passion of mine. I’d been thinking about an idea for some time focused on developing next generation women leaders. Continue reading →

Crunch time and why IT matters

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It’s crunch time. Every day counts. Can’t miss a deadline. All hands-on deck. Go live readiness assessments (GLRA). If you work in health IT and have been through a major EHR implementation, canstockphoto60328456 (1) EHR UVMHNyou’ve heard all these phrases.

At the University of Vermont Health Network (UVMHN), the Epic Wave 1 go live is less than 5 months away. The University of Vermont Medical Center (UVMMC) has been on Epic for inpatient and ambulatory core clinicals for years. Wave 1 includes the full revenue cycle, lab and anatomic pathology, radiology, OR and anesthesia, cardiology, ophthalmology, orthopedics, behavioral health, rehab, wound care, infection control, and predictive analytics at UVMMC.

Wave 1 also includes the first Epic implementations at three Vermont and New York hospitals in the network starting with ambulatory systems for billing and clinical functions. Waves 2 (2020) and 3 (2021) will be the full suite of inpatient systems at those same hospitals – Central Vermont Medical Center in Berlin, Vermont; Porter Medical Center in Middlebury, Vermont; and Champlain Valley Physicians Hospital in Plattsburgh, New York. Yet to be scheduled are Elizabethtown Community Hospital in Elizabethtown, New York; Alice Hyde Medical Center in Malone, New York; and Home Health and Hospice.

The core infrastructure is largely in place to support the November 1st go live though we have more to do at the device level. Over 10,000 users will be trained in a 6-week period. The first GLRA at 120 days pre go-live is coming up soon.

When I saw Epic on the agenda for the UVMMC quarterly leadership meeting, I assumed it was a project status update. How wrong I was. Continue reading →

Managing priorities and maintaining balance

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This week marks five years since I started writing this weekly blog. I still get asked how I find time to write each week. That’s a great question. There are weeks when I don’t know how I will find the time.  At canstockphoto9530224 work life balanceindustry conferences, people often come up to me and tell me how much they appreciate my blog. I was recently asked how long I’m going to keep writing. My answer was I’ll write as long as I have something to say that’s useful to others.

This is week three of my new interim management engagement. I have many new topics to cover based on all the best practices I’m seeing (PMO, Service Management, and effective meetings to name a few) but very little time to write.

My days are what you’d expect in an operations role while being in a learning mode. My nights are full reviewing documents balanced with addressing the highest priority follow-up work as a principal in StarBridge Advisors.

While I’m trying to keep up some level of exercise routine, gym workouts have fallen by the wayside. When we get busy, we have to prioritize and re-prioritize and be willing to let some things go. And we need to take care of ourselves.

Thursday night is when I usually finalize my blog and get it ready to publish first thing Friday morning. Many weeks, it’s when I finally write what I’ve been percolating on for a few days.

But this week Thursday night was a “date night”. A few years back when my husband and I first discussed the idea of me doing interim engagements, we thought that it could also mean having an adventure in another city if he came with me at times. We decided this was a good week for him to be in Burlington with me. We acted on that adventure goal and bought tickets for the Thursday night performance at the Burlington Jazz Festival. It seemed like a great idea at the time. Continue reading →

What organization can’t benefit from lean?

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As I start my interim management role at a new organization, I’m learning about pockets of best practices throughout the health network for daily huddles and other lean methods. I’m learning from my team that canstockphoto67324721 lean thinkingidentifying the right metrics to measure in IT is a challenge.

And of course, I’m getting a lot of standing meetings added to my calendar while trying to understand what each group’s unique purpose is and where specific type decisions are made. These are important questions given most organizations have too many meetings and people often say they spend too much time in meetings.

One of my first observations week one as I listened to colleagues is that there is potential for lean methods such as a daily management system, huddles, and visual boards.

I’ve learned a lot about lean and what it takes to introduce new concepts into organizations in recent years. One of the most important lessons I’ve learned is to listen and get to know an organization before making any assumptions.

I will be doing a lot of listening and learning in the coming weeks. When it comes to lean methods, I will share my experiences in previous organizations as it makes sense with my new colleagues and teams.

If you share my passion for lean thinking or are interested in learning more, check out my post “Lean classics worth a second look”. It’s a recap of previous posts covering huddles, visual boards, and gemba walks from my journey as a lean leader in different organizations. And if you have a story on how you have applied lean thinking in your organization, I would love to hear it.

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Leadership transitions – learning a new organization

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“Working together, we improve people’s lives”. That’s the vision of The University of Vermont Health Network (UVMHN) where I started this week as the interim Chief Technology Officer. I am excited to be canstockphoto3439718 time to learnpart of a healthcare provider organization again – even though it is temporary.

The first week has been what you’d expect – meeting new people, learning new acronyms, understanding the key issues, getting accounts and devices setup, getting access to systems, and gathering documents for review. While healthcare organizations differ, the issues and challenges are common.

My focus over the next several months will be to drive forward major infrastructure projects. With the Epic Wave 1 implementation scheduled for November at multiple UVMHN affiliates, there are critical interdependent projects that my teams will need to complete.

The opportunity to be part of a team, solving problems and making a difference is something I love doing. Yes, the days will be long, there will be lots of meetings and email, and production support issues. But, at the end of the day, I’ll know that the systems and solutions we provide and support make a difference in the lives of clinicians and in turn our patients and families.

As I act like a sponge and drink from the fire hose in the early weeks, I’ll need to get up to speed quickly on all the current activity and issues. Fortunately, the organization is not entirely new for me. I worked with Dr. Adam Buckley, Chief Information Officer, and his leadership team in late 2017 and again recently on consulting engagements focused on IT redesign.  But consulting is nothing like how deep and broad you need to go as an interim leader. As I said at our redesign retreat this week, I’m switching gears from an outside view to an inside view and excited to be part of the team. Continue reading →

Partnering for your health

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You go to a conference, hear many great speakers, take some notes, learn about some new firms, make new connections, and catch up with colleagues. There are usually one or two key takeaways. Those btn_epatient_spm (002)stories or presentations that make a significant impression on you.

At the New England HIMSS Chapter Annual Spring Conference this week, that moment came during the session by Dave DeBronkart, known as e-Patient Dave, and Dr. Daniel (Danny) Sands, his primary care physician and faculty member at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Together they were two of the twelve founders of the Society for Participatory Medicine and the inaugural co-chairs.

Prior to the conference, I knew who e-Patient Dave was and had seen him on social media, but I had never heard his personal story nor met him. Their session demonstrated the power of storytelling at its best. Now I understand why Dave is so passionate about patient engagement.

Their session, “Hot or Not? A Doctor and Patient Role-Play the Archaic and the Modern Way to Engage” was a combination of role play and presentation. Dave started by describing the moment when he was diagnosed with a stage 4 cancer in 2007 following an incidental finding from a shoulder x-ray. He learned early in his journey that the median time left for a patient with his diagnosis was 24 weeks. He thought then that he had at most 6 months to live. That got my attention!

Their role play illustrated what may be the typical patient – physician interaction vs what should be a true patient – physician partnership. They covered communications (email, texting), patients doing their own online research and sharing information with their physician, timely access to results on a patient portal, and disease specific online support groups.

The Society for Participatory Medicine focuses on the power of partnership between patients/families and clinicians. They describe “Participatory Medicine” as a movement in which patients and health professionals actively collaborate and encourage one another as full partners in healthcare. They believe this leads to improved health outcomes, greater satisfaction, and lower costs. Continue reading →

M&A work is not just about technology

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Between the organizations I’ve served as CIO and the health systems I’m advising these days through StarBridge Advisors, I’ve seen plenty of M&A activity over the years. Mergers and affiliation agreements People putting the pieces together conceptcome in all sizes.

For a CIO there are the typical areas to look at for system consolidation and integration. But it’s not just about technology. You have to consider the people who are impacted.

I recently wrote an article for the CIO Techie Magazine Healthcare Technology Special Edition 2019 called “M&A activity continues – for IT leaders it’s not just about technology”. I advised on how best to retain talent while still ensuring the strategic goals of the organization and the drivers for the M&A activity are met. My advice:

  • Get to know your new partners and colleagues early
  • Remember that culture is key
  • Partner with HR early on
  • Communicate early and often
  • Think win-win not win-lose
  • Be kind and generous

Check out the full article here.

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