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 Welcome to this Week in Health IT events where we amplify great ideas with interviews from the floor. My name is Bill Russell Healthcare, CIO, coach and creator of this week in Health. It a set of podcasts and videos dedicated to developing the next generation of health leaders. We wanna thank our founding channel sponsors who make this content possible, health Lyrics and VMware if you wanna be a part of our mission to develop health leaders.

Go to this week, health.com/sponsor for more information. This episode is sponsored by Health Lyrics. When I became A-C-I-O-I was really overwhelmed at first, and one of the first things I did was to sign ACIO coach. I. To walk with me through the journey. This was someone who had wisdom that can only be gained through years of experience.

Uh, you're gonna hear, um, . What they're excited to have accomplished last year and what they're looking forward to accomplish next year. I asked each of them the same eight questions, and I think you're gonna be fascinated to hear the similarities and the differences based on where they're at, geography and other things.

Each of these interviews is about 10 minutes long, so you can listen to 'em really quick, and some of you listen at one and a half time speed, so it's gonna go like that. Uh, we're gonna publish one a day, uh, with a few Newsday episodes sprinkled in through the end of November. So check back every day for the next episode, and don't forget to look back to see if you missed any.

Our first guest is Tressa Springman, the CIO of LifeBridge. I was excited to have Tressa join us once again on the show, a returning guest and a friend of the show. Have a listen and I hope you enjoy. Wow. So here we are from the, uh, chime fall forum and congratulations. You were, uh, no, not nominated. You were inducted.

Was that an induction? Is that what that was? I think so. That was an induction as a Chime fellow. Yeah. Chime fellow. Yeah. So does that get you like free admission for life and No, I think that just gets you on a few more committees. , you're, you're, uh, so they, they pay you back with opportunity as they say.

That's right. That's right. It's kind of crazy. . The, uh, main session, just let out. So it's a little, little loud. But, uh, what we're doing is, is a bunch of interviews, look back on your year, look forward with, with, uh, active CIOs. And uh, the first question really is, how's the role of the CIO changed in this year?

So, I think a lot of it is organization dependent and cultural. There's been a lot of activity in security technology and, uh, innovation and digitization. So in, uh, . A lot of ecosystems. People are, um, trying to understand if the CIO is also the chief digital officer, um, or relegating, CTO to another role. Um, so I think there's a little bit of schizophrenia and a lot of it, I think has to do with the comfort and skills of the specific CIO.

Yeah, I can see that I have like 15 follow on questions, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna stick to the script here. Okay. Because the, the role . Is is changing. It's a leadership role. You're part of the leadership team. Yep. You're looking at the business, how it's changing and applying technology. It's, it's been really fascinating.

Uh, what, what are maybe three priorities that you're, you know, you're, that health it is gonna support within your health system this year? Well, back to the prior question, you know, I really see my role on the executive leadership team as making sure that all of these balls are being caught. Um, meaning that we have a digital strategy, even if

It's at the intersection of it and marketing and innovation. Um, meaning that it security is being taken care of, even if it's through indirect leadership. With the role of the Chief Security officer, um, for this year, we've continued to have a tremendous amount of growth. So merger and acquisition has really been a, become a core competency.

Uh, we closed last Friday on another hospital, although, uh, most of the work that I've been involved in . Evaluating has been non-hospital work as we grow our care continuum. So I would say, um, really getting honest about our digital strategy, trying to identify a platform so we don't find ourselves five years from now with a best of breed mobile strategy.

Um, and then really, um, getting good employee engagement as we onboard new acquisitions. Yeah. So that acquisition Baltimore? Yeah. Yeah. Yep. I think I read about that. Uh, so, um, initiative focused in on patient experience. So what's, what's, what's an initiative you're working on that's really focused in on patient and patient experience has been a really tough goal for us.

Bill. You know, we've got an inner city hospital. We've got, I mean, it's just tough. It's tough. Um, but tying back to this idea and hope of a single digital platform, um, LifeBridge has made a very strategic, uh, decision to partner . Partner with, um, a vendor that has both inpatient and outpatient engagement services.

And they recently acquired someone with a fantastic footprint in digital mobile and they have had the corner on inpatient engagement for years. So, um, I've joined their strategic product council. We're very excited about that being kind of a, um, single digital platform that can, um, allow a better, more

Informed digital experience for our customers, but also an on-ramp to a lot of these other digital apps that are coming up. What about, uh, internally clinician experience? Are any any projects you're working on in, in that area? Yeah, I, you know, I would say a lot of us are continuing with the EHR optimization path.

A lot of excitement about ambient listening and about, um, artificial intelligence. And I don't really mean the sexy stuff. I mean just . Process automation, getting those really routine, uh, tasks off the backs of talented people so they're available to do other work. Um, I do think, and um, my team, my leadership team and I have been very involved in setting the pace on our telehealth strategy.

I think really that's gonna offer some unique care provision opportunities to clinicians. It's also going to assist them in, um, really a better division of labor. You know, we have a call center. We have, um, er, tele triage. We can remote with, um, PAs and NPS in a way that really, um, help share the load with those physicians, especially the physicians for whom we're finding a shortage like primary care.

We aren't at the top level, but I'm super excited about what the group's achieved and I think it's really gonna give, um, my team the ability to focus and be proud of making very . Tangible progress with technology implementation for LifeBridge. So pretty proud about that. And that's a lot of work. I mean, that's not just a, you don't just phone that in, fill out a survey, and away you go, there's a lot of work.

I think alignment with the medical staff is always hard. Yeah. Um, we have a lot of community providers. There are a lot of different competing ideas and incentives. Um, it's very hard to capture their precious time. So that, I think, combined with just the . Basics, um, of opportunities for business process automation.

Right. You know, I, I think it's a, um, very untapped opportunity 'cause it's not super sexy, but I think it's really going to give us some capacity by, um, allowing us to save money and save time, become more effective and efficient, and allow people to be more comfortable. With process automation. So as we move into AI and the complexities of the, um, ethics around more clinically related ai Yeah.

Um, we won't be scared of it. You know, I, I think I'm going to hear more and more exactly what you said, which is, um, there's so many opportunities. I mean, the technology is, is progressing so fast and healthcare as business models are changing so fast. Yeah. And there's just, there's so many areas that you could be

Pushing out in that. It's like when you sit back and look at, it's like we're making a lot of progress in the areas we're focused. Yeah. We could just double the IT staff and we there would still be enough to enough work to do. Yeah. Well a lot of it's the capacity of the people we partner with. You know, they can only sustain so many programs too.

And at the end of the day, if you wanna deliver results that work for our user community, they've gotta be at the table. Yeah. So they end up being, um, a pretty big constraint with their . Own capacity. Uh, is there any area you'd like to see more? Innovation, interoperability? We keep talking about it. Um, I think fire and API development is gonna be super exciting, but man, we just can't seem to pull it off.

So, um, I, I, I know my team and, um, the tools that are out there, the, the regulations coming into their own, all the right elements are lined up. We just need some additional incentive structures to make it happen. Interesting. Is there anything that you think would really move the needle on that? I need a fire engine

Bernie knows that for Christmas I want a fire engine . Um, I, I do think, you know, golly, there was a time when we couldn't imagine anything but point to point interfaces and now everyone has an engine or two and those engines are delivering HL seven. Um, I hope the velocity of change will be a little quicker with API standards and fire.

Integration. Integration and analytics. Integrate data. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, we're, we're sitting in a, in a sea of data and we need to make meaning and yeah, we . Are, we are. And and you know, a lot of that's around governance. We can't expect the IT professionals who are managing the data to be the ones who are business minded enough to surface, you know, the learnings from that data.

You know, we really need subject matter experts to partner with in that space. Um, but it's a huge untapped opportunity and obviously it's super sensitive as well 'cause we've gotta protect it, um, while we fiddle around with seeing if we're gonna have an appetite for monetizing it to pay. For some of the work.

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