Tag Archives: healthcare

Technology making a difference at scale

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Post HIMSS18, there have been many recaps from people who attended. I won’t try to do that but have listed several of them at the end of this post under “resources”.  Instead, I want to share with you a keynote on the final day of the conference. It represents what is possible when a team of dedicated engineers set out to solve a real problem in healthcare at scale. In fact, as I listened, it seemed like the ultimate in “health IT connect” – the name I gave this weekly blog back in 2014.

Keller Rinaudo, co-founder and CEO of Zipline, captivated those still around on Friday morning with his keynote full of stories and video clips describing the first autonomous logistics system delivering blood and medical supplies to people in Rwanda and Tanzania. Or as one of my colleagues called it this week when we were talking about it – the “blood bomber”.

As their website says, “Zipline operates the world’s only drone delivery system at national scale to send urgent medicines, such as blood and animal vaccines, to those in need – no matter where they live.” The problem they are addressing is that “more than two billion people lack adequate access to essential medical products, such as blood and vaccines, due to challenging terrain and gaps in infrastructure.”  In his opening at the keynote, Keller showed a truck stuck in the mud on an impassable road and asked, “Why depend on roads?”

Zipline developed a solution to improve access to supplies “by flying over impassable mountains and washed-out roads, delivering directly to remote clinics”. Continue reading →

Guide to HIMSS18 – onsite or remote

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If you work in health IT, you know that the annual HIMSS conference is the biggest annual industry event whether you are headed to Las Vegas next week or not. The number of emails, blog posts, social media HIMSS Blog Imageposts, and articles providing guidance and recommendations on HIMSS18 continues to grow with just a few more days before it all begins.

With so much info out there, I decided to pull together a few more resources that might help in your final preparation:

Here’s the good news! You don’t have to attend to benefit from all that’s happening there. HIMSS TV will be launched for the first time ever. There will be live coverage from the conference. You can also follow on Twitter using #HIMSS18 or specific hashtags for your area of interest.

Whether you are attending in person or following the happenings from a distance, the “Official HIMSS18 hashtag guide” will help you focus in on your areas of interest. And of course you’ll want to follow all the social media ambassadors.

Check out “HIMSS – are you ready?” from StarBridge Advisors to see our principals’ top picks for this year – mine are #WomenInHIT, #HITventure and #Connect2Health.

If you are still trying to pick your education sessions, the topical guides provided by HealthITNews as “Don’t Miss Education Sessions” may be helpful to review.

HealthSystemCIO.com has a special HIMSS18 Preview aimed at CIOs and health IT leaders you’ll want to check out.

Are you an introvert? Continue reading →

Tune in: recommendations for IT podcasts

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How do you keep up with industry news? Do you have a favorite online publication? Are you a reader or a listener? I find myself struggling to keep up with everything I want to read. But I’m doing better, now, with canstockphoto33796857 podcastat least tracking on the headlines and top industry news stories.

For all you busy multi-taskers who may be looking for an alternate way to educate yourself and stay current, 20-30 minute podcasts are a great option. Whether you’ve got a long daily commute, need something to listen to while working out at the gym or while walking the dog, consider listening to podcasts.

Here are some podcast series worth checking out:

This Week in Health IT – This is a new program launched by Bill Russell, CEO at Health Lyrics, focusing on news of the week and a topic of interest. He publishes online every Friday afternoon. I was honored to be on the program last week. We covered the Amazon, JP Morgan, Berkshire Hathaway announcement and the Apple health records app story. Both are examples of the disruptive forces we are seeing in healthcare. Bill and I also talked about the evolving role of the CIO and shared our favorite social media posts of the week.

HealthSystemCIO.com – Anthony Guerra and Kate Gamble have been conducting extensive one-on-one interviews with CIOs for several years. They publish them online as multi-chapter series. These interviews provide insight and experiences for everyone in health IT.  And if you’d rather read the interviews, they are also available as full transcripts. Continue reading →

Merger mania – is it good for the patient?

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In just the past few weeks, we saw several major healthcare merger announcements – Dignity and CHI, Advocate and Aurora, Ascension and Providence St. Joseph Health on the provider side. And then there’scanstockphoto18678854 CVS Health and Aetna – a potential disruptor in the healthcare market. And we don’t yet know what other market disruptors like Amazon or Google might do in the healthcare space.

There have been predictions in recent years that eventually there would be just 10-15 major healthcare systems in the U.S. Are we on our way to that prediction with the latest merger announcements?  The combined Advocate and Aurora system would create a 27-hospital healthcare system in Wisconsin and Illinois with projected annual revenue of $11 billion. The Dignity and CHI merger would include 139 hospitals in 28 states. If Ascension and Providence St. Joseph Health merge they would create the largest hospital chain with 191 hospitals in 27 states and annual revenue of $44.8 billion.

What is driving these mega mergers? The announcements about them talk about improved access to care, improved outcomes, lower costs, sharing best practices and overall being more prepared for success in the changing healthcare market and landscape.

Jane Sarsohn-Kahn, health economist, wrote a great piece earlier this month – “Will Getting Bigger Make Hospitals Get Better?”.  She talked about the value that matters to patients — the trust that is needed between hospitals and patients.

And what are the IT implications of these mergers? If markets don’t really overlap, what degree of system integration is needed? Is one seamless patient record needed as it is for large regional systems with a lot of patient movement between community hospitals and specialists at academic medical centers? Continue reading →

One year anniversary, how are we doing?

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For the first birthdays of my four grandkids, there have been party hats and “smash” cakes. But what does a small team of entrepreneurs do on the first anniversary of founding their firm? They take stock and plan canstockphoto48088945for year two.

David Muntz, Russ Rudish and I launched StarBridge Advisors in October of 2016. So how does a health IT advisory firm measure success after year one?

Number of clients – We have already assisted 12 healthcare provider organizations with some repeat engagements and have national reach.

Revenue – Any first-year projections can be a crapshoot but you need to start somewhere. We may have been overly optimistic but we are well on our way with our client base and pipeline.

Size of our team – In addition to our three principals, we now have almost 20 advisors on our team available for interim management, leadership support and consulting. Their IT leadership experience includes serving as CIO, CTO, CISO, CMIO or CNIO in healthcare organizations.

Channel partners – We work closely with several larger consulting firms who offer services that we don’t. We partner with Healthcare IT Leaders, a leading staffing firm and Rudish Executive Search, which specializes in healthcare.  And we are working with a few start-up technology vendors who are bringing to market new and novel solutions for healthcare providers.

Referrals – Our principals combined have over 90 years of experience in the healthcare industry. Our relationships are a key component of growing a new business and getting known in the market.

Name and brand recognition – A year ago we had decided on a name and incorporated, but had yet to figure out our branding. That was some fun work at first; by January we launched our website and social media presence. Continue reading →

Humanitarian crisis, American crisis

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A week after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico, we are hearing that this United States territory is facing a humanitarian crisis. That is a phrase we have all heard before about poor countries in other partscanstockphoto18234898 of the world – it could be the result of a natural disaster or a civil war. A crisis like this saddens us, but it’s usually so far away, and we just move on.

What is a “humanitarian crisis”? Wikipedia defines it as “a singular event or a series of events that are threatening in terms of health, safety or well being of a community or large group of people”. Another way of saying it – when the basics of life are unavailable – food, water, transportation, healthcare, and communications.

Puerto Rico is us, yes US. It is not somewhere far away. It is 1000 miles from Miami. 3.5 million people live in Puerto Rico. It is 3 times the size of Rhode Island – in square miles and in population.

Less than 50% of Puerto Ricans have running water. The entire island is without power, the power grid has been destroyed. Only 29 of 69 hospitals on the island are operational. Hospitals still open are running on generators and quickly running out of fuel. In the capital city of San Juan, 2 people on life support died when their hospital’s generators ran out of diesel.

Interviews with San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz on MSNBC brought this home. She could not have been more articulate in her plea for federal help. As she talked about the dire situation and the reality of hospitals running out of power, she described them as places to care for and heal people, not to be death traps.

Luis Guiterrez, U.S. Representative from the Illinois 4th congressional district, whose parents were born in Puerto Rico described in vivid terms what the elderly are going through there. He asked us to think about what it would be like for our own elderly parents who may live alone. What if they didn’t have access to food or water and they needed insulin. He called for the U.S. military to go in and quickly set up a power and communications infrastructure as we know they can and do in wartime.

The USNS Comfort is larger than many of the largest hospitals in this country with 1000 beds. Continue reading →

Culture matters in mergers   

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If you live in a large metropolitan area, chances are you have been either a patient or a visitor in an academic medical center that has 500 to 1000 beds. If you live in a rural area, you are probably more canstockphoto8191068familiar with a small local community hospital with less than 100 beds.

Because of healthcare mergers and acquisitions, these two different kinds of hospitals are likely to be part of one integrated health system. While different in size and scale, they both deliver healthcare to their community 24×7.

Small, independent hospitals are often very agile, extremely customer service oriented and supported by a loyal community. In IT, the staff are often generalists and less specialized. They may have a single integrated system from one vendor with basic functionality and limited integration points with other applications.

In contrast, large academic medical centers can be slow to make changes and appear more bureaucratic. They provide advanced medicine with subspecialists and clinical services not found elsewhere. They have to work harder to create a culture of customer service. Their community is broader and they attract patients from greater distances, including international patients. And their IT teams are larger with many specialized roles. In addition to their core electronic health record, they have many specialized departmental applications, many interfaces. Overall, it’s a far more complex environment.

So how do these different profiles mesh at merger time? Continue reading →

8 tips for telehealth success

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Telehealth or connected health as some call it, takes different forms depending on the provider organization and their strategy. The primary driver may be extending geographic reach by providing canstockphoto40754495telehealth services to rural areas. Or it may be largely a focus on consumer engagement.

Regardless, there are common themes for successful initiatives. Based on my experience in several healthcare systems in recent years, I offer these tips for success:

Strategy is key – The organization must first determine what the key drivers are for the initiative. Is it to extend reach or provide an easier patient experience or a combination?

Tactics and specific programs will follow – Once the strategy is clear, which specific clinical services and offerings are needed the most will become clear.

Physician leadership is needed – If the focus is on extending reach of certain clinical services, physicians are at the center and must provide overall direction. For consumer-focused services, ambulatory services or strategic planning leadership may play a more central role.

Operational issues and decisions must be considered early on – There are legal and billing factors along with workflow issues for clinicians and staff to work out before any implementation. Continue reading →

Different organizations, common IT challenges

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I had the opportunity to participate in the CIO panel at the New England HIMSS Chapter Spring Conference this week. The questions for the panelists covered a range of issues that currently challenge canstockphoto5451287healthcare CIOs.

Some were:

  • how mergers and acquisitions impact IT;
  • how to improve patient engagement given the move to accountable care models;
  • how to provide growth opportunities for our teams and;
  • how to find time and resources to drive innovation.

I have been a CIO in a few different healthcare organizations recently, so I could describe multiple experiences with these challenges. While we have similar internal drivers, and face similar external constraints, no two organizations are the same.

These questions connected well with some of my focus areas during this current interim CIO engagement at Stony Brook Medicine. After about a month in the role, I summarized what I thought to be my focus areas and shared them with the executives. The feedback was that it was ambitious but on target.

Here’s that list. It’s generalized so you can consider it a good sampling of what interim CIOs can do for an organization, and what other CIOs may be focusing on: Continue reading →

A tale of patient advocacy

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We have two little dogs. Pepe is a 10 year old Shih Tzu/poodle and Coco is an 8 year old Shih Tzu /Bichon.  Pepe had been getting frailer and weaker throughout the Fall months. IMG_2946 (002) waiting at the bus stop

We thought this might be her last year with us. But her blood work in November showed that she has a thyroid problem.  She now gets a daily medication and has more energy and no longer sleeps most of the day. The name Pepe (as in peppy) is fitting her again.

She had also been losing weight and getting very thin. So, we started her on canned food. Maybe she had  a problem with the dry food she has always eaten. Or maybe Coco, who is dominant, wasn’t letting her get to the food dish. What dog or cat doesn’t love canned food??? Pepe loves it and has been gaining weight. While my husband and I are still getting used to that nasty moment when you first open the can of wet food, we do it because we love her and want her to gain weight and get strong. It’s working.

When we recently took Pepe to the vet to deal with a digestive problem, the vet found she had a broken tooth and the area around it was inflamed. She would need surgery to have it pulled. That happened this week and all is well. She is even back to eating treats that take some chewing. In hindsight, the broken tooth could have been the reason she stopped eating the dry food.

Animals can’t talk or “use their words” as we tell small children, so it’s hard to know when something is wrong. And it’s hard to know the interconnections between all these issues. Continue reading →