HIMSS Conference Preview: Mike Mistretta on Reimagining the Outpatient Experience; The Importance of Including IT from the Beginning; and Some Common Sales Tactics to Avoid

When IT folks are handed just about any situation, they find solutions – it’s in the DNA. So it’s not surprising that when Mike Mistretta, SVP & CIO at VHC Health System, was handed finished plans for a new outpatient building, he and his team went to work outfitting it with the latest and greatest technology to make the vision of a no-wait, one-stop-shopping outpatient experience a reality. But that doesn’t mean Mistretta would have refused an invitation to sit with the architect during the planning process. It’s simply a fact that it’s never too early in the process to include IT (and its cousin, IT security). At HIMSS this year, Mistretta will present his vision for the seamless outpatient experience. While there, he’ll also meet with vendors that offer solutions to his specific problems. In this interview with healthsystemCIO Founder & Editor-in-Chief Anthony Guerra, Mistretta talks about his presentation, how he likes to engage with sales folks, and how he’s handling the industry’s new dueling-conferences dynamic.

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Bold Statements

So we had to come up with a process to streamline that registration flow and, basically, we blew up our registration and scheduling processes out there to accommodate the building architecture.

… a better design becomes better adoption, which becomes better ROI, which becomes a better patient experience at the end of the day. So the further we get involved on the front of these things, the better the answer is for everybody.

So to me, that’s part of the key – building that relationship, understanding capabilities, so that when I do need somebody, that’s there. But I don’t need someone sending me an email once a week for the next six months trying to get something in. That’s probably the biggest turn off, to your point, of how not to get in  the door.

* Session Title: Opening the Digital Front Door to Transform Outpatient Care

* Day/Time/Location: Wednesday, March 13 • 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM Eastern Time; W204A

Anthony: Welcome to healthsystemCIO’s HIMSS conference preview interview with Mike Mistretta, SVP and CIO with VHC Health. I’m Anthony Guerra, Founder and Editor-in-Chief. Mike, thanks for joining me.

Mike: Thanks for having me, Anthony.

Anthony: All right, very good, Mike. I reached out because I know you are speaking at the upcoming HIMSS conference. Your session is “Opening the Digital Front Door to Transform Outpatient Care,” which is interesting, as it’s specifically on outpatient care. So let’s talk a little bit about that.

Mike: Yes, so where this initiated for us is we had an imperative where we were actually building a new outpatient pavilion building. And the architects, in their infinite wisdom, looked at the building and actually built it with a “digital design” in mind. So, what does that mean?  There’s no patient waiting rooms or anything like that in there. So the flow of these facilities needs to be pretty seamless and streamlined out there, so that we don’t get patients backed up in the lobby. It’s a five-acre complex that has all the outpatient services – physician offices, outpatient surgery, radiology, lab, all the things you would do in an outpatient center – that’s in that building that’s there.

So we had to come up with a process to streamline that registration flow and, basically, we blew up our registration and scheduling processes out there to accommodate the building architecture.