For healthcare leaders, improving the experience for both patients and providers has become a top priority. Patients want seamless; they want to schedule appointments online and submit medical information through a portal. But no matter how much resources health systems have invested, simply implementing the technology – and training people on how to use it – isn’t enough, said Chris Paravate, CIO at Northeast Georgia Health System.

“If we don’t actually go into the clinic and support the operational flow, we won’t be able to make that connection,” he said in a recent interview. He knows this from experience, which is why one of his most pressing priorities as CIO is to iron out the kinks that exist and create better processes to be able to leverage technology. During the discussion, Paravate spoke with Kate Gamble, Managing Editor, about the importance of ensuring clinical and operational buy-in with digital initiatives; the challenges organizations face in navigating mixed care models; why he believes patient experience doesn’t have to be a “trade-off”; and the one aspect of healthcare he’d like to eliminate.

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Key Takeaways

* One of the biggest sources of frustration among patients? Waiting rooms, said Paravate, who believes they’re “the ultimate insult.”

* With violence against hospital employees on the rise, Northeast Georgia is piloting technology that can more quickly and accurately locate staff who are in danger. “Mobility continues to be a key piece of technology to support all of these functions.”

* As a “technology company,” Northeast Georgia is “completely dependent on digital solutions and technology to run our organization. And so, leveraging that as an asset and being thoughtful about how it’s shaping our patient experience and our employees’ experiences is paramount.”

* Paravate’s most significant goal for 2023? Supporting strategic growth, he said. “We want to make sure we’re not just expanding or extending what we already have in our portfolio, but really taking the opportunity to test new technologies, implement new tools, and bring them back to other existing facilities.”

Q&A with Chris Paravate, CIO, Part 2 [To view Part 2, click here.]

Paravate:  From the patient experience standpoint, it’s leveraging the smart TV in the room to give them their care plans — what’s the plan to get discharged, what are they waiting on, and when someone walks in the door, it can present their credentials. It’s also leveraging that TV for video consults with family, translation services, things like that. There are tons of ways in which we can make our organization more efficient in our care delivery and create a patient experience that is far superior.

I think we can all agree that as a patient, probably the most frustrating thing to do is to wait. Frankly, waiting rooms are the ultimate insult to every patient because to me, it’s saying, ‘it’s okay for you to wait on me,’ which I don’t think is a good message.

We’re always trying to help patients understand where they are and what they’re waiting on. And as they flip to inpatient status, the questions we get are ‘when can I go home’ or ‘what is my next step.’ To be able to show that to family members who are overseeing care is a big part of our overall design and architecture, both in the inpatient facilities we’re building and i...