CMIO Podcast

Al was a previous guest on the show and he did such a great job in May of 2020 that I brought him back for the sequel. Al is now 1 year into his CMIO role at Nuvance Health and in this episode we discuss what that year has been like, his influence within the C-Suite, and the impact he is having on the care in his community. I know you will like the work he is doing with virtual scribes and the digital front door too.

IT culture is a unique beast, especially in healthcare where there is such a focus on safety. "Go slow and say no" seems to be a common mantra and can create a lot of tension between operations and IT. Adam has a ton of experience with assessing and changing culture as a healthcare IT consultant. He and I discuss changing IT culture, treating IT more like a consultancy, partnering with operations, and having transparency around resources and projects.

Ori is a CMIO with a ton of experience. His recent blog post about training physicians really resonated with me. Train the workflow, not the functionality. Build muscle memory. Allow providers to listen to the material at home and then let them practice. Provide as real a scenario as possible.

This week I cover 2 stories about health insurers pushing us more towards value than volume. Humana launched 2 new bundled payments; one for CABG and another for shoulder replacement. United Health Group CEO discusses how the COVID pandemic is putting more pressure on primary care to switch to at risk contracts rather than fee for service, but also highlights the difficulties. CMIOs should be aware of the technology challenges these models bring to their clinicians. I also cover the INOVA breach of more than 1 million patients related to an attack that occurred to a 3rd party vendor that sells donor engagement software to non-profits. The most interesting article of the week comes out of the latest issue of JAMIA where a team developed an app that lays on top of Epic to provide the user a disease specific view with a very clean interface. This is the future. Watch for more of these SMART of FHIR apps coming out as the APIs open up. Those stories and more on this weeks CMIO News to Know.

Michael has a unique role in healthcare. He helps startups connect with health systems to solve the most pressing problems facing the system. In this episode we discuss how a CMIO is involved with innovators, what to do when a colleague presents an idea they think will be the next big thing, and how to build that critical relationship with a startup if they are partnering with your system.

Hope you enjoyed your Labor Day weekend. It was beautiful here on the east coast and the beaches were plenty busy. This week I cover some of Judy's comment about Epic's Cosmos, nursing optimization, and a bunch of articles around telehealth. One of the bigger moves last week in the telehealth space was Google investing $100 million in telehealth provider Amwell. Finally, I cover the AMA release of the 2021 CPT codes and the HUGE benefit coming our way for documentation relief on Jan 1.

Bill Russell and I discuss the first 90 days of taking over a new team. A quote from Bill: "Our problem in Health IT is we consider it a good day if nothing went down and we got our work done. The reality is every day that nothing went down , and you got was all your work done, you fell one day behind because at the end of the day, the whole world is changing but you're standing still."

This week I cover the Amazon Halo wearable and all the things it can do. Toy or healthcare game changer? For you to decide. I also cover a cool AI story about uncovering illicit online pharmacies, ways to make CDS better, and AI for documentation assistance. Those articles and more on this weeks CMIO News to Know.

This week I cover the letter from AHA to the HHS about keeping telehealth going. We seem to be losing momentum, but we are not out of this pandemic yet and there are certainly benefits beyond COVID-19. I also cover a new tool that normalizes the local COVID-19 lab test names we all use to standard LOINC codes. A friend and fellow CMIO Dr. Dirk Stanley covered the challenges we all face (and created) with finding if the patient has COVID-19 when looking in the EHR in his June 2020 blog post which you can find here. This new tool proposes to help fix this for research use.

I also cover a great article by Bill Krause at Change Healthcare that really articulates why the EHR portal is not enough for your digital strategy. I believe the portal is your first step but it definitely has limitations which Bill covers very well in his article here. Those stories and more on this week's CMIO News to Know.

"Why does my computer lock at 8 minutes" and "How come I can't use the VPN to connect to the hospital" are questions I know you get too. So I found a CIO to help me answer them. Dave Lehr is the CIO for Lumenis Healthcare in Maryland and he jumps into the hot seat to take on these questions. Practical advice on IT security and HIPAA protections from Dave that you can put to use right now.