For healthcare IT leaders, ensuring teams are engaged and feel connected to mission is becoming increasingly critical. “It’s always been important for me to make sure I can translate for my teams how the work they do supports our patients and clinicians, and contributes to the strategic success of the organization,” said Maureen Hetu, AVP of IS Operations at Penn Medicine.

The most effective way to do that, she said during a recent interview, is to go right to the source by inviting clinicians to tell their stories and help IS teams realize “the tremendous positive impact they have.” During the interview, Hetu talked about how her team is leveraging storytelling to improve satisfaction, why relationship-building and collaboration are more important than ever, and how her guiding philosophy has evolved through the years. She also discussed the benefits of being with an academic medical center, what attracted her to Penn Medicine, and the qualities she finds most valuable in future leaders.

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Key Takeaways

* A key difference in going from faith-based organizations to an academic medical system? “The patient conditions are so much more complex,” which means leaders are “constantly challenged to be agile and support these clinicians.”

* Drawing from past experiences, especially heavy lifts like EHR implementations, is critical in understanding the burden clinicians are carrying, and understanding how to support them.

* Connecting IS to the organization’s benefit is extremely beneficial, Hetu said. “My teams are most effective when they understand how the work they’re doing connects back to the goals, objectives, and success of the organization.”

* Although face-to-face meetings are extremely valuable, virtual meetings provide an opportunity to include people in conversation who may not have been able to attend otherwise. “It becomes more convenient.”

* One of the most important qualities in leaders? The ability to “listen and use critical decision-making to maintain relationships with your staff.”

Q&A with Maureen Hetu, AVP, IS Operations, Penn Medicine, Part 2 [Click here to view Part 1]

Gamble:  This was your first experience working with an academic medical center; I can imagine that was a learning time for you.

Hetu:  It continues to be a learning time. Not a day goes by that I don’t learn something new, which is great. I’ve been in healthcare IT for probably close to 40 years, and other than a few years with Tenet, I’ve spent the majority of time in faith-based healthcare. The approach is a little bit different. The challenges are different. In faith-based healthcare, there is a constant financial challenge. Because of the communities you’re serving and the various payer mixes, you don’t have the opportunity to do some of the really innovative things that you can accomplish when the organization is better positioned financially.

One thing that became very apparent to me as I walked into Penn Medicine is the difference in the level of innovation and the pace of change. You combine the highly skilled, very bright clinicians who provide care in an academic medical center, where the patient’s conditions are so much more complex, with the constant influx of new talent from the school of medicine, and you are constantly challenged to be agile and to support these clinicians in their quest for innovation.