If you’re fortunate enough to work in healthcare and IT, every year presents a significant mix of big challenges and even bigger opportunities. 2025 is no exception. One of HIT’s paradigms for approaching challenges is to focus on people, process, and technology – technology being the easiest of the three.[…]
What the US Could Learn from the UAE about Healthcare
I have spent much of the last four years working in the Middle East as an interim CIO and executive project director at two different hospitals. I have seen the healthcare systems of two different countries from both a business perspective and a patient perspective. Since I was primarily in[…]
Ring Theory – A Practical Tool for Dealing with Trauma and Crises
September is National Suicide Prevention Month, a time dedicated to raising awareness about suicide prevention and promoting mental health. Suicide is very personal to me. My wife died from suicide. I wrote what started as a blog but became a longer story about my family’s experience with suicide and offered[…]
Is HIT Strategic Planning Still Relevant for Providers?
In the past there was little question about who owned the HIT Strategic Plan – the Chief Information Officer (CIO). That has changed in many organizations. Organizations are creating new C-suite officer roles – chief data and analytics (CDAO), chief digital officer (CDO or CDIO), chief data officer (CDO), chief[…]
An Effective Strategy for Valuing HIT Investments
Assessing the value of IT investments has posed a challenge throughout my 35+ year career as a healthcare CIO. With the growing demand for digital health solutions and the surge of interest in AI in its various forms, establishing a reliable IT investment valuation process has grown increasingly crucial. A[…]
The Disappointing State of Analytics at Most Hospitals & Health Systems
Over 60 years ago information systems were introduced into hospitals and health systems to assist with core financial areas of the business. Soon after, the first electronic medical record systems were installed. With very few exceptions, each and every application had a reporting feature that allowed its users to run various[…]
2021 – A renewed focus on clinical systems
In 2020, the year of COVID-19, health system IT departments were in reactive mode – dealing with and reacting to data requests, staffing challenges, and capacity strain, while supporting the pandemic response. In the coming months, we will see a completely different world, with vaccination roll-out, a new federal administration[…]
Time to Elevate ROI to VOI
For all those CFOs, CIOs and CDOs out there, the time has come to reassess your approach to evaluating investments, particularly those in HIT (healthcare information technology). Reports on how to respond to COVID’s dramatic financial impact on every sector including healthcare starts with and often focuses on a review[…]
Who am I? Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) can help.
Who am I? Let’s assume that we’ve solved the positive person identification problem and we know with 100% certainty the identity of the person who’s come for a health or care interaction. Do we really “know” them? I think not. Even today with the proliferation of electronic records and the[…]
Who Belongs at the Center of Everything We Do?
Ask a healthcare system leader where they focus and the answer will generally be the same, “We put the patient at the center of everything we do.” Laudable, but examine how budgets are spent, where efforts are focused, and you’ll find that providers are more often at the center. This[…]