“We’re focusing on the real issues.”

Since Bradd Busick arrived at MultiCare Health System two years ago, his core objective has been to find better ways of doing things. Not because the organization wasn’t on the right path — it was, and continues to be. “The vision for transformation is real,” he said during a recent interview with Kate Gamble, Managing Editor at healthsystemCIO.com. “It’s palpable. And frankly, it’s now an expectation.”

What the 11-hospital, Pacific Northwest-based system needed was someone who could help steer it in the right direction, whether that means ensuring Epic is fully optimized, leading an infrastructure modernization effort, or making customer service a key priority. Busick, who spent several years with the Gates Foundation, seemed like the right candidate for the job.

In the interview, he spoke about what it was like to begin his first CIO role in “firefighter mode” as the organization dealt with Covid; the huge importance of having “an incredible leadership team and business partners”; why he’s optimistic about the next generation; and the many lessons healthcare can learn from outside industries.

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Key Takeaways

* The three key areas of investment as MultiCare modernizes the infrastructure are: optimizing the EHR, replacing the ERP platform and improving the access and referral program.

* Having the support of “an incredible leadership team and business partners” is critical with any initiative, Busick said. “It doesn’t happen just because the CIO said so.”

* By bringing in executives from outside of healthcare, MultiCare is able to take a more balanced approach to the consumer experience piece.

* If employees want to get promoted, they have to “change the trajectory of a given capability or focus area, or changing the direction or trajectory of people on their teams’ lives.”

* The next generation of leaders are “teachable” and “really hungry for people to authentically connect with them.”

Q&A with Bradd Busick, CIO, MultiCare Health System, Part 2 [To view Part 1, click here.]

Gamble:  What do you consider to be your key areas of focus in 2022 and beyond?

Busick:  This is the year of reimagining MultiCare’s infrastructure, and it manifests itself in a few key areas. Multicare is scaling at a pretty egregious pace; to enable that, we have to have systems and infrastructure to support it. And so, we have three main areas of focus this year.

The first we talked about before, which is the Epic optimization. How do we get up to speed on the latest foundational version of Epic, so that our providers have the best experience possible? We want to make the most of their time and ensure they’re operating at the top of their license. That’s one of the biggest priorities.

The second is swapping out our ERP platform. We spent six months in 2021 doing discovery, and we started implementing Workday earlier this year. It’s a 15-month project that will go live in March of 2023. It touches all of finance, all of supply chain and all of HR. It’s a massive foundational effort that, frankly, is going to make us more efficient.

The third area of investment for us is our access and referral platform. It comes back to how can we provide a really elegant way for people to engage with Multicare in the same way that you and I and engage with Alaska Airline...