On Best Practices

COVID-19 – listen to the experts

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Dr. Anthony Fauci may be a household name for your family. But what about Andy Slavitt?  He is a policy expert who served in the Obama administration first to save health.gov and then as acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. During the pandemic he provided reliable, relatable information and education with his daily tweets at @ASlavitt and award-winning “In the Bubble with Andy Slavitt” podcast.  He quickly became a household name with my family and a trusted resource. Many trusted him and looked to him for insight.

He served as President Biden’s Senior Advisor on COVID-19 for the first 120 days of the new administration. He is now back from the White House and in his chair on the renamed podcast – “In the Bubble with Andy Slavitt: Our Shot”.  As the podcast description says, “Just as he took us through the pandemic, this 10-week series called Our Shot is about leading us out. It’s an insider’s guide for getting closure on what happened, how we emerge, and what must come next.”

Busy as my schedule is, I am trying to keep up with this new series. So far, I have heard his interviews with CDC Director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, and President Biden’s Press Secretary, Jen Psaki. And I am halfway through Andy’s just released book written primarily prior to his recent stint in the Biden Administration. His book, “Preventable – The Inside Story of How Leadership Failures, Politics, and Selfishness Doomed the U.S Coronavirus Response”, is a must read. Not just to understand what happened but how do we prevent it from happening again.

While COVID-19 may seem to be behind us, it is not when you consider the variants and the percent of the population not yet fully vaccinated. Continue reading →

Remote work – writing chapter three

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In my blog post late May, “Remote work – what next?”, I commented on the balance needed as organizations begin to bring people back to the office. Balancing the organization’s needs with the individual’s preferences and choices. I concluded that the organizations that are thoughtful in their plans and supportive of their workforce during this transition time will be most successful in retaining and attracting talent. I noted that chapter three of remote work was just beginning to be written.

I continue to hear from colleagues on their approaches and see many articles on the subject. That includes a rather concerning one, “The Great Resignation…..by Remote Workers”, written by several senior partners at the search firm Korn Ferry. One of my CIO colleagues shared it on our Children’s Hospital Association (CHA) CIO Forum Hot Topic Call last week when we were discussing our respective approaches to continuing remote work. The article describes the challenge of retaining employees who now know they can be a remote worker for companies anywhere who may offer a higher salary or better benefits and perks. They emphasize the need for organizations to rethink their retention programs and find new and innovative ways to incorporate remote workers into the culture.

It was useful to hear from CHA colleagues – flexibility is the operative word. Having broad guidelines and letting individual managers work with their teams on how best to make a mix of remote and onsite work most effective for them. A few of the CHA CIOs talked about national recruitment with each having several states where they are approved to recruit from. For an organization that primarily operates in one state and hires from a few bordering states, expanding recruitment nationally will depend on HR support and dealing with tax laws. But if you do go down this path, one CIO cautioned that you need to ensure inclusivity and find ways to make out of state employees feel part of the culture.

My colleague and principal at StarBridge Advisors, Russ Rudish, wrote an excellent blog post recently outlining the challenges and opportunities that both employers and employees are focused on as we enter this next chapter. In “Now What? Working in a Post Covid World”, Russ comments on recruiting and retention, work / home separation, feeling part of a team, and more. As he says, there are no quick or simple solutions but how companies address them will have significant and broad impacts. Continue reading →

Rounding in a virtual world

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If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know I am a fan of lean concepts and practices. In fact, my posts on lean have been some of the most popular ones over the years. So, it is no surprise that I have embraced a form of rounding or “gemba” now that I am serving as interim CIO at Boston Children’s Hospital.

As part of our commitment to being a High Reliability Organization (HRO), Boston Children’s Hospital has a program called “Rounding to Influence” (RTI). With this program, senior leaders meet with staff in their areas to discuss a specific topic and solicit input. The Rounding to Influence program is facilitated by David Davis, Vice President, Patient Safety, Quality and Regulatory Affairs. When I learned about the RTI program several weeks into my interim engagement, I was quick to start participating.

My first experience was tagging along virtually with Laura Wood, EVP Patient Care Operations / System CNO, on her rounds with clinical staff along with a few of my IT leaders. Given the topic for that session was about having the right information to perform your work, it was a great place to start and hear from our clinicians and support staff. Here were the questions:

Having the right information and data is important to everyone in order to perform their roles effectively.  Depending on your role, do you have trouble finding the information or data you need to do your job?  Do you know how and where to get the information/data you need?  Do you have concerns you are seeing incomplete or unreliable data?  How would you know?  How can we be more reliable in our information and data sharing?

The obvious next step was to start virtual rounds with our own IT staff. Here is how it works. Continue reading →

Yes, culture matters

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“I love this organization”. That is exactly what I said to my husband last Thursday after hearing several presentations in three different forums as part of the team at Boston Children’s Hospital. It started with the monthly Department Heads meeting that opens with a patient and family story and closes with an inspirational quote.

That meeting was followed by a lunchtime every other week series (dubbed Fireside Chat), open to all employees focusing on how we are supporting our patients and each other. Dick Argys, Chief Culture Officer and Chief Administrative Officer is the host. As part of our Juneteenth series of events, the topic was “The History of Juneteenth”. Our guest speaker, Theodore Landsmark, PhD, JD, Distinguished Professor of Public Policy and Urban Affairs at Northeastern University along with Peter Faiteau, Patient Services Administrator for Oncology/Hematology/HSCT, talked about the history and significance of Juneteenth.

The Juneteenth series was announced in an email from Dr. Kevin Churchwell, President and CEO to all employees last Monday – before it was declared a national holiday. He acknowledged that it was only the second year Boston Children’s was celebrating Juneteenth and closed his email with this: “Boston Children’s celebration about Juneteenth is all about learning from each other. And the more we learn about our history, the better equipped we are to build a brighter and more inclusive future for all”.

That was followed by an open forum for all employees, “Transforming Tomorrow: Investing in Children, Families, and Communities”. Dr. Churchwell and a panel of leaders described the new inpatient building opening in summer 2022 (far enough along for an inspiring video) and the new ambulatory centers being planned in nearby towns making care more accessible to families in the broader Boston area.

And earlier in the week we had all been invited by Dr. Churchwell to a virtual celebration to announce and congratulate the entire Boston Children’s team on being ranked the number one children’s hospital in the nation in the 2021-22 U.S. News & World Report “Best Children’s Hospitals” rankings. Continue reading →

Remote work – what next?

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After 14 months of remote work for many, organizations are making plans to bring people back to the office. Most healthcare CIOs that I spoke with in the past year plan to have their staff either remain fully remote or back in the office part-time for a “hybrid model”. Only one CIO that I spoke to had his full IT team onsite throughout the pandemic. They were considered critical support staff and available to augment staff in other departments if needed.

With this transition there are many articles covering all sides of the topic and the challenges facing organizations and employees. Two recent articles from Harvard Business Review are worth checking out.  The first one, “What Mix of WFH and Office Time is Right For You?”, is aimed at individuals assessing their own workstyle when it comes to work location. If the employee has a choice, the article suggests they do a self-assessment and then discuss with their boss what would work best for them. The second one, “How To Do Hybrid Right”, is aimed at organizations trying to determine the right hybrid model in terms of employee types and workspace design.

A recent opinion piece in the Boston Globe by Jon Levy, “The Hybrid Workplace Probably Won’t Last”, talks about the pendulum swinging back to onsite work. Jamie Nelson, CIO at Hospital for Special Surgery, made similar projections in her recent podcast with Bill Russell on This Week in Health IT and talked about being onsite herself through the pandemic and the importance of leaders in healthcare organizations being present.

Bill and I covered the topic extensively on This Week in Health IT Newsday show earlier this week. A few of my thoughts on the topic: Continue reading →

Resources for your digital health journey

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My StarBridge Advisors colleague, David Muntz, wrote an excellent blog series on Digital Health over the past year. His latest in the series is titled, “Digital Health – Planning for the Virtual Campus”. David’s ability to define digital health and provide a blueprint for organizations is impressive. This most recent post does not disappoint. He describes the changes that health systems have made in care delivery during the pandemic and poses the question – where do we go from here? He outlines 12 steps organizations should take. Here is a partial list just to whet your appetite:

  • Embrace the same discipline and framework to create the virtual campus as for a traditional campus
  • Query a broader representative sample of stakeholders than you have in the past
  • Plan for the underserved and those who might be excluded because of the digital divide
  • Personalize the experience for providers, patients, and families
  • Use augmented intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) during the data collection process

I encourage you to check out the entire post. If you are interested in any future posts in David’s digital health series, subscribe to View from the Bridge to get notifications of new posts. Our team of advisors regularly contributes posts on a wide range of topics relevant to today’s healthcare executives and IT leaders.

The New England HIMSS 2021 Annual Spring Conference: “Empowering People to Impact Health Through Information and Technology” was this week. Continue reading →

Career advice revisited

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It seems that I am getting a lot of requests to provide career advice these days. I did formal career coaching for a few people in recent months and am currently participating as a mentor in the Boston Young Healthcare Professionals (BYHP) mentor program. In all these situations, I point people to my many previous blog posts on career advice to supplement what we discuss.

For general career advice, they find these “classics” useful to review:

Career advice in a competitive market

5 job search challenges in 2020

You need to own your own career

Taking control of your life

Make career choices right for you

New year, new job?

Time for a job change?

Stand out at the interview

So you didn’t get the job

In this new virtual world of recruiting, I tell people not to underestimate the power of LinkedIn. It is an online professional directory that recruiters look to for candidates. Optimize your profile. Ensure the one liner under your name is a good description of your role since that is what people see when you invite them to connect with you and when you are found on searches. Use the about section to describe what you offer and how you can add value – don’t just copy and paste your current job description summary. Be active which shows you are current and engaged – that means sharing content yourself and commenting on other people’s posts. And if you are actively looking for a new job, check the “open to work” box – don’t worry, you can control who sees it.

If you are thinking of using a coach, check out these two posts:

When to use a career coach

Investing in you, the value of a coach

Looking for a new job can be exciting and hard at the same time. Hopefully, the lessons and tips in these posts will make it a little easier.

How do patients rate telehealth a year later?

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Since March 2020, telehealth volume has increased at rates we would never have anticipated. As Dr. Rasu Shrestha, EVP & Chief Strategy & Transformation Officer at Atrium Health, said during a panel at the recent CHIME21 Spring Forum, “It was an overnight success 30 years in the making”. Indeed, when there were no other choices, clinicians and patients were quick to adapt.

But what do patients really think of telehealth a year later? The COVID-19 Healthcare Coalition recently published the Telehealth Impact: Patient Survey Analysis. The aims of their research were to determine:

  • How well did telehealth serve the clinical needs of patients during the COVID-19 pandemic?
  • For what reasons did patients seek care through telehealth?
  • What were the strengths and weaknesses of telehealth related to quality of care?
  • What are patients’ expectations for the use of telehealth after the pandemic?

The 20-question survey was open to persons 18 years or older who had at least one telehealth encounter between March 1, 2020, and January 30, 2021.Survey responders included 2,007 persons from across the U.S. who received telehealth during the pandemic.

The findings were highlighted in an mHealth Intelligence article “COVID-19 Telehealth Delivery Reaps High Patient Satisfaction”, by Hannah Nelson on April 15, 2021. The results are very encouraging for the future of telehealth. Continue reading →

Treasure the good

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The past 14+ months have been a period of loss and sadness. Even if you and your loved ones have remained healthy and employed, the pandemic has impacted all our lives. Now that over 200M people in this country have received at least one dose of the vaccine, 87M people are fully vaccinated, and the vaccine is available to anyone over 16 who wants it, we are on our way to a new chapter. But we still need to get to at least 70% for herd immunity and continue with precautions.

I don’t want to appear Pollyannish as we look to the future, but let’s ask ourselves what good has come out of this past year.

Have you had more quality time and connections with your family being home so much?

Have you found new ways to connect and celebrate milestones with family and friends at a distance?

Have you simplified your life and decreased your consumption?

Have you found new hobbies or restarted old ones?

Have you spent more time reading and learning?

Have you spent more time outside enjoying nature?

Have you explored cooking new foods and eaten healthier at home?

Have you become a kinder person, more caring about your community and people you don’t know?

Have you come to know and appreciate your co-workers in new ways after working together through tough times, and perhaps meeting their kids on video calls and hearing their dogs bark in the background?

Have you converted your work commute into something positive for yourself?

Have you spent time reflecting on your career and what truly is important to you? Continue reading →

Crowdsourcing – looking for your stories on digital transformation 

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I am trying something new with this week’s blog post. I will be doing a talk titled “Digital Transformation: Emerging from COVID19” at an upcoming virtual conference. I will be working on it in my spare time (aka the next two weekends) so it can be recorded in advance.

For many organizations, Digital Health means the “digital front door” and an increased focus on patient or consumer facing applications. But it is far more than that. My StarBridge Advisors colleague, David Muntz, wrote an excellent blog series on Digital Health over the past year. His first post attempted to frame what we mean by Digital Health – “Digital Health – Is Healthcare Ready? Are You and Your Organization Ready?”.

He starts by trying to define it and acknowledge that the Wikipedia definition is good but not great: “Digital health is the convergence of digital technologies with health, healthcare, living, and society to enhance the efficiency of healthcare delivery and make medicine more personalized and precise.” As David expands on his definition, he says ”Digital health requires harnessing the energy from the data tsunami that includes all sources, not just provider-controlled databases. We need to synthesize data from existing sources and use patient generated data, social determinants of health, census information, AI engines, and so many other sources.”

As I work on my upcoming talk, here is my “crowdsource” ask if you are willing to share your stories and anecdotes on any or all of these questions: Continue reading →