With any major decision, having the right representation is critical – even when the decision seems like an obvious one, said Rich Rogers, CIO at Prisma Health, in this interview. “You have to make sure you have a number of folks represented who voice that same opinion.”

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Key Takeaways

* To be successful, vendor partnerships need to go beyond purchasing a product and supporting it. “It’s about how do you help our business and help us take care of our populations better.”

* The talent war is becoming increasingly intense. For leaders, it means learning what motivates individuals and getting them involved in the right projects “so that they feel fulfilled.”

* After the merger that created Prisma Health, the next step was to “create one IT organization,” which meant building the right teams and making “difficult decisions.”

* One of the most important qualities in future leaders? The ability to “manage other people, treat them with respect, and be able to deliver business results.”

Q&A with Rich Rogers, Part 2 [To view Part 1, click here.]

Gamble:  Has your approach to vendor relationships evolved over the years or have you had pretty much the same strategy?

Rogers:  We’ve always tried to maintain good relationships with our vendors, but this is a little bit different because it takes it a step further. It goes beyond purchasing the product and supporting it. It’s about how do you help our business and help us take care of our populations better collectively? It takes a step beyond that and it supports our transition to a value-based care model as well for the populations we serve. And so, it has gone beyond the traditional relationships we’ve had in the past.

 

Gamble:  You talked earlier about innovative initiatives. I would imagine that’s key in being able to retain good people.

Rogers:  There’s a talent war out there. You have to find what motivates your individuals and get them involved in the right projects so that they feel fulfilled and can grow. It has definitely helped from that perspective in terms of getting involved with some of the projects with Siemens.

 

Gamble:  You’ve also done some work with Phillips around enterprise imaging, which is something we’re starting to see get picked back up again. Can you talk about what you’re doing in that area?

Rogers:  Phillips is another one of our strategic partners. We’re standardizing on their patient monitoring system throughout our health system. That puts us in a position to do some creative things on the nursing side such as central monitoring and other tools that can help combat the nursing shortage.

From an imaging standpoint, Phillips is implementing their enterprise imaging and PACS solution across our enterprise. As part of that, we brought together three distinct radiology groups. We had one PACS system upstate, and another four or five across the Midlands. Now we’re consolidating to one for the entire health system — one consistent image sharing solution, one VNA, etc.

That helps drive our strategy of having a few core systems and leveraging them as much as possible to standardize our care processes across the health system. It’s the final piece we needed to support our overall IT strategy. So those are the main components right now.

We’re also talking with Phillips about using virtual care center assistance...