When Dustin Hufford was named full-time CIO at Cooper University Health Care — after serving as AVP of IT applications and interim CIO — he was ready to hit the ground running. “If I get this, we’re going to jump right into strategy development,” he recalled thinking.

That was in December of 2019, which meant just a handful of weeks passed before his team had to pivot to focus on facilitating new models of care delivery. Like so many other leaders, he realized how quickly things happened when there was a single objective, and so, when it was time to reassess priorities, Hufford adopted a new strategy: agility.

“We were able to move quickly,” he said during an interview with Kate Gamble, Managing Editor of healthsystemCIO. “That’s what we’re trying to harness. How do we get to that level of focus and attention? We think agile is a way to do that.”

During the discussion, Hufford talked about the foundational work his team is doing to take on a new approach, and why they’re flipping the traditional IT governance model. He also discussed the challenges of retaining staff in a competitive market, how he has benefited from his experience with community hospitals, and Cooper’s ultimate goal of improving access to care.

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Key Takeaways

* For Cooper University Health Care, one of the keys to being able to retain talent in a competitive market is to “treat our staff like professionals,” and avoid micromanaging.

* Although the first-year turnover rate from 2021 was somewhat high, long-term retention has held steady, which Hufford attributes to constant engagement with teams, as well as its transparent remote work policy.

* “Because it’s a small team, you have to get your hands into everything, and you gain a deep knowledge of all the different IT domains,” said Hufford, explaining why being CIO of a community hospital was so beneficial.

* Although Cooper has chosen to keep digital within IT, “we’ve tried to embrace what would come from a separate chief digital officer, which is really just a tight partnership with business operations.”

Q&A with Dustin Hufford, Part 2 [To view Part 1, click here.]

Gamble:  You mentioned strengthening the staff as one of your goals. That’s been an issue for so many organizations. What are you doing to recruit and retain people?

Hoffman:  A couple of things. One is to treat our staff like the professionals they are — not micromanage them, but empower them to make decisions. We also use rounding. For instance, I meet with our team in larger groups, and we do a session where I meet with subsections of the team to go over our strategy and make sure they understand where we are.

It also gives them a chance to ask me tough questions, and I answer in short order. This helps make sure they’re comfortable the things we’re doing in our world. We engage with them as much as possible, which has helped a lot in keeping our scores high.

It has also kept our turnover rate low. The rate of turnover for people within the first year of employment was a little bit higher than we would have liked. A lot of people are shifting around in the market trying to figure out what works for them, whether it’s consulting or part-time employment. But our staff retention for people who have been here longer than a year has been extremely tight. We’ve it at a very low number.

The other pillar,