In healthcare, it seems like the only constant is change. Whether it’s patient experience or employee expectations, the pendulum is always going to be swinging. For leaders, it means being willing – and able – to pivot, said Sonney Sapra, SVP and CIO at Samaritan Health Services and Samaritan Health Plan, during a recent interview.

One of the biggest adjustments has been the transition to remote and hybrid work models. With IT talent at an all-time premium, it’s imperative for leaders to find ways to stay connected with their teams, and make sure they feel fulfilled. “They can get a paycheck anywhere; we have to be able to look at what they need in their day-to-day life,” he said.

During the discussion, Sapra talked about his team’s core objectives – which include becoming a data-driven organization and moving to 100 percent virtual; the “leap of faith” that brought him across the country; the culture of “systemness” that permeates throughout the organization; and why he became involved in ACHE’s Executive Diversity Program.

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Key Takeaways:

* “Our top priority right now is becoming a data-driven organization,” and moving toward a future where data are leveraged to improve population health.

* In addition to being “Epic-first,” one of the guiding philosophies at Samaritan is to focus on “what the system needs as opposed to what the hospital may need.”

* “Every organization goes through growing pains when you adopt a different set of thinking and a different culture,” and although Samaritan started on the journey more than 4 years ago, “we still have a ways to go,” said Sapra.

* As remote workforces become permanent, leaders need to change the way they engage with teams. At Samaritan, “We have monthly town halls. We have virtual water cooler talks. We try to stay as connected as we can.”

* The other impact of the hybrid work trend? Leaders can now extend their searches when recruiting IT talent. “We need to start thinking about not restricting ourselves.”

Q&A with Sonney Sapra, CIO, Samaritan Health Services, Part 1

Gamble:  Hi Sonney, I look forward to talking about what your team’s working on and get into some of your background as well. Let’s start with a high-level overview. Samaritan is a five-hospital system based in Oregon, and you have a health plan, correct?

Sapra:  Yes, we have a health plan as well, which is called the Integrated Health Network. We have five hospitals, two of which are critical access, and we have about 120 clinics.

 

Gamble:  And you’re located in the Pacific Northwest?

Sapra:  Yes. We’re about an hour and a half from Portland. Our corporate office is based in Corvallis, where Oregon State University is located.

 

Gamble:  Okay. And so, what do you consider to be your top priorities at this point?

Sapra:  Our top priority right now is becoming a data driven organization and going down that path of managing our data, both from a system perspective and a health plan perspective, and that plays into true population health. And so, we’re spending quite a bit of time looking at how we move forward with that and putting some plans in place. We’re launching a project next year to bring all of that together — a lot of time and effort are being put into that.

We’re primarily an Epic shop for inpatient and outpatient, with the same instance throughout. We probably have about 600-700 active applications in the system, and so, we’re looking at how to bring the number of applications down in somewhat of a cons...