During the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, the streets of New York City were deserted — even in the middle of the day. Organizations like the Hospital for Special Surgery were forced to pause all procedures. And yet, for the IT team, things were as hectic as ever. “There was so much break-fix work to do,” said Jamie Nelson, now in her 11th year as CIO at HSS. The book of business may have dried up, but “our teams were so busy with day-to-day projects that it didn’t feel like anything slowed down.”

As a result, once her team was given the green light to move forward with projects such as selecting a new ERP solution, they were ready, said Nelson. During a recent interview, she talked about how HSS survived the lockdown – and why she made it a point to show up every day, and her team’s big plans to continue to digitize as much as possible. She also discussed the “new paradigm” leaders face in the wake of Covid, and what worries her most as a female leader.

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Key Takeaways

* Although most work happened remotely during the early stages of Covid, Nelson remained onsite throughout to be able to support teams and make quick changes when needed.

* Despite HSS’ “book of business drying up” in 2020, IT stayed busy with day-to-day projects and break-fix work, Nelson said. “It didn’t feel like anything slowed down.”

* Six years ago, a “soup-to-nuts” Epic implementation took up most of IT’s time and resources; now the priority is digitizing back-office functions, which Nelson believes will be a game-changer.

* The ultimate goal with HHS’ new facility is to create “a tech-enabled building that delivers fabulous orthopedic healthcare.”

Q&A with Jamie Nelson, SVP & CIO, HSS, Part 1

Gamble:  Hi Jamie, thank you as always for your time. A lot to talk about today, but I wanted to start with Covid and how it affected your teams. Obviously, everybody was hit hard by Covid in one way or another, but being in an epicenter like New York must’ve been very challenging.

Nelson:  So, I actually came to the office every day. I have a place in New York City, and so I was able to walk to work. I have two offices: one is at the hospital. The desktop team is right outside my door. And I have my regular office at 49th Street and Third Avenue, where the larger IT team is based.

But I came in every day. We had to stop doing surgeries since orthopedics is considered elective, and we retooled several of our ORs to turn them into ICUs so that we could take Covid patients from New York-Presbyterian. We thought we were taking ‘Covid-light’ patients — but as it turned out, there’s no such thing as a COVID-light patient in the height of a pandemic. And so, we had patients on respirators; we even had sometimes die. That doesn’t happen here. We don’t have patients die. If somebody gets really sick, we take them over the bridge over to New York-Presbyterian. They handle that; it’s not what we do. But our clinicians just pivoted and did an amazing job.

It was a very unique time to be in New York City. You’d walk down 5th Avenue in the middle of the day and the street was empty. It was such a different time.

 

Gamble:  For you, what was behind the decision to be there every day?

Nelson:  There are two pieces. First, it was out of respect for the clinicians who had to be here. I’m a senior executive, and so I think it was important to support our clinical users and have visibility when they’re on the floors.

We were making a lot of very fast changes.