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  Thanks for joining us on this week in Health It Influence. My name is Bill Russell, former Healthcare, CIO for 16 hospital system and creator of this week in health. It. A channel dedicated to keeping Health IT staff current and engaged. Today we are joined by K Clus Ear, the CIO for Penn State Health.

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You can also go to today in health it.com. And now onto to today's show. Today we are joined by Cletus Ear, the CIO for Penn State Health. Cletus, welcome back to the show. Thanks for having me, Bo. It's a pleasure being back, man. I love the, uh, Nittany lines behind you. It looks, it looks really a, a awesome, of course, I, I grew up in Pennsylvania and I know what a, what a big deal Penn State is to, uh, to the people of Pennsylvania.

So it's a pleasure being here, right. I'm, I'm very proud to have the, the lion on my, as my background and just being part of an organization that is, has a reputation of excellence, so very happy to be here. Yeah, absolutely. You got the dogs in the background? Are you working from home? Yeah, I'm working from home.

So sorry about the background noise if you're hearing . Oh, no, we've, we've all gotten used to it. It's this, this is just part of the world we live in these days. Yeah. So if people hear the dogs in the back, they sound like significant dogs. What kind of dogs? Oodles . So, so, uh, they, we, we ended up getting two brothers, two siblings and part of the pandemic.

And they, we didn't know the size. They ended up being really big. So we had two, two big beadles. Yeah, I understand. That was a thing. I mean, there was a lot of pet adoptions during the, the pandemic and I guess it's not hard to figure out why that is, but, Mm-Hmm. , my daughter a, adopted a dog as well, and she was saying she had to wait, she had to wait almost.

I think almost two months before she could get a dog. 'cause they were, they were all adopted. It was adopted, whether it's the kennels, whether it's the alt centers. It was tough. I mean, the biggest, biggest, one of the biggest, uh, industries that. I had a great time was the, the dog industry. As a matter of fact, we're still seeing components of it because try to get your dog groomed now , it's almost impossible to try to get your dog groomed.

So yeah, we're seeing remnants of it. We hope everybody continues to keep the dogs though. Do not return 'em, right. ? Yes, because that, that was the concern that people were just doing it for the pandemic. If you weren't a dog lover. Yeah, it's, it's been intro. We're gonna get into some of those questions, but I, I want you to tell us about Penn State Health a little bit.

Give us a little background. Uh, so you're new there, you, yeah. Yeah. The last time we talked, you were with, uh, Kaleida Health. It was Kaleida and Great Lakes Health West New York. Yep. And I, I came over to Penn State and I'm Penn State College of Medicine as well, Penn State Health and State College of Medicine, and came here.

I can't even tell you. Pivoting. I can't even tell you how many times we had to pivot and, and transform, not the traditional onboarding of a new CIO. When you, when you come in here, you, you take care of things you really need to take care of. I'm actually now starting to do many of, much of those elements.

A year and a half later because we just did not have the opportunity, we were heads down in, in really remediating to getting the entire workforce to work from home. I wouldn't say the entire, obviously we have care providers, but a good portion of our workforce, we, we got them to be at home and, and then moving into the whole vaccination component.

So very interesting dynamics up until recently vaccines and now as. Globally going down as far as utilization, so we're now getting back to normal, believe it or not. Yeah. Well as, as, as normal as it can get for a healthcare CIOI mean, what, whatever, whatever normal, abnormal is. Yeah. I remember when somebody asked me, how many projects are you currently working on in your health system?

I was like, I think it's like a hundred twenty, twenty five, and they're just like, yeah, which one do you get priority to? I'm like. Some days it's whichever one I need to give a priority to. And other days you're more strategic. It's just there's a lot going on. Yeah. 125. That's a light day . So, so talk about, talk about Penn State Health a little bit.

So are, are you in, uh, Harrisburg State College? So, so we have about six or seven, eight on how you look at it. Different locations. Of our facilities are in central Pennsylvania, the central Pennsylvania. We are in my corporate area in Hershey, the sweetest place on in the United States. It's a really great dynamic.

The, the majority of our organization centers around the college of medicine, right? The Milton Hershey Medical Center was built to support the college of medicine, and that's again, smack dab and Hershey, pa. We have other spokes out there. Or whether it's St. Joe's, we have, we just took on another hospital from Geisinger, which is Holy Spirit building another hospital in one of the areas on the West Shore that's gonna be opening in less than 90 days from now.

Um, called Hampton Hospital. And we have another hospital that we're building a brand new hospital on the east side of the East Shore called Lancaster. So again, multiple hospitals, . A physical therapy, a rehab hospital, children's hospital, dub hospital. We're a collection of different facilities as we continue to grow in the region.

Yeah. Hershey's an interesting place. I I, I watched the documentary on Milton Hershey, and that whole city was meant to be sort of a planned community. That was built around his staff and his employees and yeah, providing them the best healthcare, best education, best environment. If, yeah, if he's not one, he's gonna be a saint.

That guy, the man is an absolutely amazing. If you, you heard that you saw the story about the, the man Absolutely amazing what he's been able to do and that that culture. That he's established and that community resonates throughout our health system. And, and that's why it's so important on all the things that we're doing and how we're, we're looking to just really look out for the, I'm sorry I digressed once again, but I, I played golf once in Hershey and the whole time I smelled chocolate and, and I have to apologize because I did work.

My internship was at m. And it was funny, every morning you drove into town in Hackettstown and all you could smell was chocolate. As far as you, I mean, I, is it hard to lose weight in, in Hershey with the smell of chocolate? Yeah. You, you smell it and it's just, it's just what it is. You get, you get used to, well, I don't know if you could ever get used to it, but it at least you crack a smile when you smell the chocolate.

So what's the role that the CIO entail? We've seen the go in a lotions. A digital C-D-O-C-I-O, that kind stuff. What, what does it at?

Yeah, so the, the CIO here, and again, the dog's barking really loud, I'm sorry, , but the CIO here, you know what we're, we're a traditional method, but when you add as ACIO for the college, there's a different element because it's not just your traditional healthcare technology, but it's, it's around research is health sciences.

It's a university, and, and there's a, a different dynamic on how we, we manage that way, right? So. We, we, I do see the CIO role continuing to evolve in that digital manner as we do the traditional healthcare CIO things. But as we move, and I think the covid, you know, process expedited the initiative of being more digital.

So in essence, our customers now. Expect to use technology. They used it. Many of them used it to do vaccines and other things that they've been able to do. People are remote now. So I see this as a, uh, a more of a natural progression of the CIO helping and transition into that digital officer to allow.

For a better connectivity to our customers where they are and, and I think that's a demand that we're seeing from the communities that we're serving. The College of Medicine and the academic medical centers a significant data load to lift because there's all that research going on. There's also grants and that kinda stuff going on.

There's just so many things that maybe aren't completely different, but they're bigger in scope and scale and, mm-Hmm. , what I've heard from other academic medical centers is. You have a pretty tech savvy group of people that have gotten grant money and are very, they have a lot of ingenuity. They tend to do things on their own and figure things out and put together these things.

And then as the CIO, it's sort of like, okay, put the security wrap around this. Put the, put the, all the things you need to to put around it. Yeah. You just described the AMC too. It's a very accurate point. We are traditional, we're R one facility, right? So research is inherently. Where we, where we're involved in and petabytes and petabytes of data that we have to support, whether it's on a research side, whether it's on a traditional data side.

So it's not easy. They're resourceful, as you could say. Our researchers are resourceful. They, they want what they want and, and rightfully so because they get grants. But we have to be mindful of that and we have to understand that there's, um, challenges, particularly around intellectual property that we have to preserve, protect, and preserve.

So there's that fine line of. Allowing and enabling our researchers to be as transformative as they can to help them with their initiatives. But there is that sensitivity that we still have to protect the information. Right, and and that's where. I, I partner with, uh, our CISO and Matt Schneider, amazing individual to help transform the organization and deliver what we need to while keeping ourselves protected in today's world.

I. It's actually a very much an issue. As you can see, the White House has issued a, a release about security and when they're starting to talk about, Hey, we may consider cyber threats no different than a terrorist threat and we won't be able to pay ransoms, guess what? That's a game changer, right? Those, those are things that we need to start thinking through in a much more comprehensive way than we ever did before.

I'm actually.

We'll, we'll talk telehealth a little bit, but before I get to those things, what, what's top of mind as you look at this week or this month? What's top of mind right now for the, the CIO at, at Penn State? Yeah, so for me, we have about four major initiatives, um, that are going on. We're, we're doing a new ERP solution, actually, that ERP solution is going going live.

Uh, less than 15 days. We have a new revenue cycle system that's going live in about four weeks. We have a red schedule solution and the new hospital opening in October. So between now and the end of the year, we have projects that would normally take. Companies they would dedicate on that solely singularly, we have three or four of them happening all at once.

That's for me to be frank. It is the number one thing our board asked us, Hey, has anything changed? Even though Covid was going on, did the landscape of our strategy change. And the answer was no. So they said, then you move forward, you continue to march forward. And, and, and it's great to have a leadership of Steve Nini as CEO of Steve with a, a phenomenal board to help direct us in that way.

But it doesn't mean it's gonna be easy. We are gonna have a lot of work. And that's basically top of mind for me right now, ERP supply chain. Uh, new hospital Tower hr. Yeah, it sounds like a normal day. Yeah. HR, new HR system, new time management system, a new RegEd system. And the new website is, to your point, it's Yeah.

all, all in three months . Yeah, that's, that's how it is. Bill. Tha thanks for carving out at least. An hour for us, . We really appreciate it. Well, I, I guess, I guess we'll see you, we'll see you, uh, next year after you're, you've done all these projects. Yeah. You know what though, just to, to to point, and this is good and bad of Covid and now this hot topic we have over the last year, we have established this process.

Of doing things and working at the speed and pace, which I don't think is sustainable, right? For a long haul. I've talked to a lot of colleagues and know others feel the same way, that it's just draconian, uh, as far as the amount of work, this is what happens when the industry continues to evolve. So I think this is something that not just for me, I know a lot of other colleagues across the globe are experiencing very similar elements of

The work that needs to get done, and it's just going to be at a pace that we are gonna have to be able to manage in the near future. Yeah. I, I've yet to talk to a healthcare CI who said I'm bored. There doesn't. Let's march through some of the hot topics. I mean, and these are just some of the things that keep coming up as we talk to CIOs, return to work.

How are you approaching this as a health system? Return to work on site is probably the best. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So our organization, we've decided that we are going to. At least for the most part, particularly around shared services that we, we give people the option, right? We give them an option and we are anticipating about 50% of the workforce that are are non bedside nonclinical at the bed will be hybrid.

So we are in that process right now. Our IT division, we're going through a change. So the change is we're re fabbing in a building and it's gonna be our IT headquarters. And so that's not gonna be done. Oh, by the way, that too is gonna be done at the end of the year. So, you know, we're, we're gonna move into this new fabricated facility.

We don't have this space now, right? We are consolidated. So for the good portion of our teams are gonna remain remote. And in that hybrid state until we, we move into a, a much more complete infrastructure or building. But the same thing applies to the rest of the organization. So whether it's our financial teams and and others, those that are traditional back office that are not required to be at the bedside, we expect to see the same kind of facilitation for that, that workforce.

So we do still see that about 50%. We'll remain working in the hybrid space, so a lot of hoteling, right? And making sure we facilitate the hoteling so when they come, they have ability to be on site. But working through that, that element of being more, more flexible and, and how we manage our teams a any major challenges from a, from a management standpoint.

These projects, managing these people, connecting with the people. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think there's a, a, a value the fact that over the last year and a half we've been able to manage people in different ways. Right. Particularly being remote. So I, I do think from our point of view, if we're gonna have people on site, we need to have our managers.

Figuring it out, right? So our goals are, you're there if there's gonna, um, be people on site, you have to have managers that have FaceTime, right? So giving people the ability to help them. They, they wanna be on site. They also want to interact with their managers in, in that sense. So the goal here is we all need to just be more creative on how we're adjusting to the hybrid model that we're we're putting in place.

And also, what about the 50% of the folks that wanna be . On site permanently. So a hundred percent work at in the office. So there's that collection of, well, we need to match the right manager, right? If the manager wants to work from home a hundred percent and is that staff member wants to be at. The office a hundred percent.

Then there has to be some give and take, and, and that's, I think that's the biggest, um, hurdle that we have to work through. I won't pretend that we have it down. We, we are working through that, that dynamic now. But again, I don't, this is not just an IT thing. This is across the board, and I think we're just gonna have to be as creative as possible.

To, to meet our, our, our customers and our customers being our employees, right? Because I always say we are owe each other's customer, so we are gonna have to meet our teams and, and where they are so that we are recognizing their needs in order for us to be successful. We, we could talk about that for the next half hour.

Let's, let's keep moving though. So security, there's, there's been several. Let, let's just call.

Ransomware attack, but this one at Scripps Scripps is a pretty big target that was taken offline. And what I wanted to ask you, but really with, without divulging too much about your security posture, how are you approaching this, this growing threat? It's tough. Again, I've talked about the academic side, right?

That's a whole nother element. Segmentation, looking at different elements of, of . What your redundancies are. We are just going through line by line, looking at our weaknesses, looking at our threats, typical swat, um, analysis and trying to figure it out. I, I will not lie to you, but we know each other long enough.

It is not easy. It is not, this is more of a, an art than a science because it's like whack-a-mole, right? You think you have one thing covered. And those bad guys are, are 10 steps ahead of you, so you don't know where they're gonna come out from somewhere else. And an organization such as, you know, health system where, you know, at the biggest end of the stick of, of what the issues are, it's the human factor, right?

The human side. It's very difficult to do that. We emphasize education, training, reinforcing that way. We're taking very seriously what the White House has issued. And continue to work through some elements there and figure trying to figure it out as it's, as a team, try to remove the lowest hanging fruit of threat associated at the end of the day.

I always say this, that, look, if the federal government gets compromised, they have billions, trillions of dollars and a significant amount of staff, if they're able to get the compromise because of a state sponsored threat. We're not gonna be able to facilitate to, to stop it. So it's not the typical, it's not if, but when our goal is to, how do we remediate, right?

We need to figure out an action plan to remediate and to to, to get back up and help mitigate the risk associated to exposure. So. We can, again, try to remove the lowest hanging fruit of threat vectors to, to prevent the traditional snot nose, uh, hacker that would wanna, that's in somebody's garage that wants to, to come after us.

But when it comes to the state sponsored attacks, we just have to do as much as we can to plan for a remediation effort. Yeah. Security is so hard. I, I remember the, after the, after I. We did an assessment, we had 10 different areas, and I just looked at it and I thought, my gosh, it's gonna take us a decade to fill in all these gaps because they only have to find one entry point into, into the network.

And you have to protect. You have to protect all of them. Now, obviously we changed. We changed how we think about security. It's not about. It's also about identifying the anomalous traffic within the network and all those things, and Yeah, and shutting that down and, uh, and segmenting the network and, and all that stuff.

It's the work that keeps changing because in the fall it was RA and now it's another version and we're starting to.

People are actually using names and information that they have harvested from social media and other things so that the emails aren't as clear as salary list PDFs click on this. It's, yeah, it's a lot more like, Hey, Cleatus, how you doing? Glad to see your back from vacation. 'cause they got information from Facebook and, and then the links are embedded in that and away they go.

But that's, that's where they get so much more sophisticated and. A lot like the other emails you're receiving from your colleagues. Yeah. Kinda scary. Yeah. The key is question everything, right? I think that's the methodology that you have to have and if it means slowing down and, and with your response, I have to tell you because we, with phishing people like myself and, and CEOs and other C titles, they're a high target.

I. Thread, right. And to go after. So we have to just make sure that we're being very diligent on what we are, um, selecting and what we're responding to. It's not easy because it's, it, to your point, there's always a new vector. There's always a new, a new approach on everything's a zero day when it comes to their, their new methodology of how they're coming after us.

So I, I assume telehealth was big during the pandemic Yep. For you, as it was with every other health system. What's Mm-Hmm. , what's next for telehealth at Penn State? Well, we, we continue to transform with telehealth bill. We are looking, look, it wasn't perfect. We, we used Amwell as a third party. We've had that for years.

Um, like any other health system, what they were, we were able to do is roll it out and, and make it accessible as many of our . Practices and services shut down. What we've realized though, is it wasn't, it was good, not perfect, but we had opportunities to improve and we are in the process now of integrating the technology into the EMR.

So we are at Amal shopping to work with Cerner to make sure it's integrated within the workflow so that our, our clinicians don't have to come out of their system, go into another system, document. Take it back into another system, making it much more simple for clinical throughput so that in essence it has the best experience we do.

We did understand that there was a significant amount of challenges with . Customers on the other end of how they use it. Browsers, everything's not equal. You can't guarantee that everybody's going to use the same method to connect right on the, um, consumer side of the shop. So the tools that we're, we're talking about using, it's, it's leveraging in ways that we can actually just be more, uh, thoughtful and practical where the technology can accommodate.

All variations of, of customers on the backend, on their front end, or which is on our backend. So it's just using it in different ways to have a better outcome, but integration is key. That's going to be our, that's actually our number one follow up from what we learned, uh, last year. So those are the two things that slowed down the most is not having it well integrated internally and then Mm-Hmm, , just the digital divide that exists outside of, uh, the four walls of the health system.

I mean, you have different populations and, and people may think you're in Hershey and other rural places, but you get far enough out and there's a, there's a reason most telehealth visits during the. They were telephone visits because there still is a broadband and digital divide that exists. There is, there's a huge disconnect there and we're looking in many different ways to partner with broadband carriers to to help change that.

Whether it's the, the Comcast of the world, which is in our region, Pennsylvania, or the cellular providers to look at connections from that perspective. So we're really looking at how do you help with that digital divide? And, and that's a, that's a true problem. Yeah, that's interesting. So I mean, is is digital health gonna accelerate or you think it'll stay at the same pace, or you think it's gonna slow down coming outta the pandemic?

I, I think it's, it's gonna accelerate times 10. I think we're at the cusp of, of, of greatness. We talk about going back to cyber for a second, as the continued evolution. Of cyber and using artificial intelligence. I do believe that we're gonna have to have, um, AI, fight ai, right? When it comes to those who are attacking us, we're gonna need it as quantum computing becomes a thing, as we get down towards the zero nanometer, we're down to two now, right?

Uh, the, uh, two nanometers now going down from the chip size to zero, and I think that we're so close to that side that tipping the scale is going to tip. So much that we are, we're going to take advantage of that. And I, I say to people, the future is not 10 years from now. The future is now. We're seeing elements of that happen inherently every day.

These are tipping points that are happening all around us. So I think the evolution, the digital transformation is imperative to complement that You bring up that AI fighting AI and.

2014, we, we had to set up actual rules. Look for this. If you see this, then this. Mm-Hmm. And what we have now is tools that are going out there watching the traffic across the network using machine learning and saying, okay, this is what normal looks like. And then at some point when it changes, it's generating alerts.

And that's without me sitting there and going, okay, this

threats. Almost as they're happening. Yeah. Because of anomalies. Right? And, and that's, that's what anomaly based detection is, is something that we're gonna have to always focus on and using the machine, but to continue to, to learn in that manner. So I completely agree with you. It's game changer, but there's technology that's doing it today.

And can you imagine that same principle? Gravitating towards healthcare, right. And being able to say, where's the anomaly? I, I had a, there was a personal situation where somebody I knew has a implant inserted, and it's a relatively new implant for ECG kind of anomalies. And what I found that was interesting by this, it's a traditional.

It's not your traditional Holter system, but it's something that goes under the skin and it stays there for three years. Bill three years. Now think about this for a second. That's three years of continuous tracking of your, your health to in help identify strokes that data. Right. What do you do with that data?

That data is so transformational that it will help when, when you add machine learning on top of it, it's going to be able to abstract information and, and, and help patterns that we can't even. Start to believe in three years and we wouldn't have even thought about that right Now that it's three years, it has a cellular chip in it and it's able to push things out where it doesn't matter where you are, you can be anywhere, and that instance connect, actually be uploaded to the cloud.

I mean, we're really talking about game changing information and technology that's gonna help us promote care. Once you start to add these, these algorithms on top of it to help figure out what's happening to the body, we are, we are gonna know that people are gonna have a mi or something before they even know it.

And that's, that's really transformational. Yeah. That is transformational and exciting. We could obviously talk about where that, where that takes us from a clinical standpoint. Mm-Hmm. . And we could talk about where that takes us from a, a privacy standpoint. It's interesting 'cause when I think about privacy in that case, I think, you know what the, the benefits far outweigh the risks to my personal privacy.

Yeah. I'm more than happy to share that with.

That has the algorithms to identify those things early. Because I mean, the alternative is, okay, I might have my privacy hack or I might die, right? So I, I would like to know those anomalies exist, and we've always said this, we have more, we have more meters on our cars than we have on our personal body, so I would transfer some of my privacy rights.

In order to get that kind of feedback, I think yeah, I, I completely agree. I think there's a component where we're gonna have to decide, Hey, do you want privacy all the time or do you want to live? And, and I think there's a fine line, but those who are in a position, particularly when you're dealing with your loved ones, know we want our loved ones to live, right?

And we we're willing to do what we need to do to ensure that data is shared so that we can have the best outcome possible. So what, what's the hardest position right now to fill in it at Penn State Health Business Intelligence. Machine learning folks, CRM folks, I, I'm noticed, I'm not mentioning a few, but our BI all around data, the people around data, a security, it's all, we're all competing is industries.

Regardless of the vertical, we're all competing for the same skill sets. And, and now that a good portion of people are working from home and organizations are allowing it, guess what? We're not competing with people, uh, through throughout the non-traditional state lines. Right? So we have the ability to lose people that goes to Silicon Valley 'cause they don't have to relocate and they can get paid a lot more money than we are.

So all of these positions, these data-centric, data rich positions are extremely complicated and, uh, extremely difficult to fill in a, in a timely manner because of the competition across verticals. Is there a benefit of being at Penn State to tap into the Penn State talent in any way? We have approximately.

107,000 students, right? That that's across the Commonwealth. Pretty big organization. And we try, right? We have the ability to have our, our students, we have internship programs, we have other types of faculty based models. But even with that said, and you have so many talented folks, they're looking at other organizations as well.

They're looking at your Googles and Apples of the world. So if you're trying to get your top talent, can you compete with Apple? The reality is, no, we can't, we can't compete when it comes to trying to, uh, attract that talent. But you do have the ability to say, if you wanna be local, you wanna work for a cause, something that you know is going to help people's lives, right?

You can get paid very well, but you do also have a almost a mission . Return and that mission is in helping save lives. And that's one something that we are absolutely doing. And we saw that in the, uh, the covid activity, right? We did something that truly helped save lives. I don't think too many other organizations or verticals can claim.

Having, uh, visited Hershey Park and lived not far from there, and having been recruited for a job in Silicon Valley, I just, and anyone who's thinking about going to Silicon Valley needs to take into account the fact that you're gonna live in a shack, . This was actually later on in my career and I was gonna have A-A-C-I-O position up there in Silicon Valley and

I still couldn't afford a home there. I mean, it was, it was unbelievable how expensive it was. So, yeah, I, I, I still don't know how people can, I, I just, you, you have to, you know, making millions and millions of dollars in order to just sustain something like that. It's, it's not realistic. Yeah. It, it, it, you should just show 'em pictures of the houses in Hershey and say, this is what you can get here,

This is where you're gonna live over, over here. And, uh, and you should be able to just get some chocolate. What? What do you think the lasting impact of the pandemic will be on health It. Uh, well this, this is a really good question. As far as lasting impact, I think that there is some, and this is not just it, but just in general, there's a huge psychological scar, right, to what we've experienced people, it's, it was traumatic.

What happened with Covid and that trauma, we're gonna have to address it as a society and help in it. I, it's, you know, because we were working, talk about that pace. That, that constant pace, I think we're going to have to understand, bill, how do we navigate and, and produce the results, but not on the heels of breaking our team's backs.

And I think that's probably the biggest challenge. We're seeing it with schools, we're seeing with the psychological impact to, to industries has been. Really bad and the frustrations that we're seeing on a daily basis. The increased amount of gun violence, the increased amount of violence on the planes.

I think there's a correlation between what we've experienced over the last year being sheltered in place and, and we're lashing out. I. And I, I'm concerned that our industry, we we're not being mindful enough of the psychological impact that all of this has had on on folks and that burden as well, that the health IT technology.

It's supposed to help and in some cases it's not. So I think that I don't have a good answer as far as how do you remediate it, but I do believe that these kind of soft, which are usually traditionally, um, quantified as soft items are actually not soft at all. They're really going to be impactful to how we navigate in, in the near future.

There, there's so much wisdom in that answer, just in terms of. The psychological impact of this, I don't think we're gonna know it for another decade. We talked earlier about getting a dog and that stuff. People need to interact. Need to interact. They need to be a part of a community, be loved, be cared for, be uh, a part of a mission, a part of something bigger than themselves.

And when you essentially lock them in their house, it's, it, it, regardless of what your thoughts are on the lockdown and it's effectiveness on. Psychology. Mm-Hmm. in terms of coming back out in terms of interacting with people. I remember the first time I went to a grocery store after we found out about the pandemic and I, I was very aware of the fact that I walked through that Costco very differently.

I was very aware of how far apart I was from someone. I was very aware of who was. Of not following the rules and that kind and just, I didn't like, I didn't like who I was becoming in my mind. Yeah. And we all had those similar battles. And what do you do with your, your family members and your, how do you protect your kids and how do you protect your parents?

And we had decisions to make. Were weightier than any decisions we've had to make before, and I think that, I agree with you, there's a long-term psychological impact to that, that we we're not gonna know for quite some time. I, I always go back to nine 11 and one person tried to, or a couple of people put a improvised bomb in their shoe.

And ever since we have to remove our shoe when we're boarding a plane years later, decades later, we're going on 20 years of nine 11. We, we still are managing it differently. And that's, it was a catastrophe, don't get me wrong, but we have, we're coming up to 600,000 people dying in this country opposed to several thousand.

And I think that recourse is going to just. It's gonna continue to find its way. Can you imagine the first time we're back together and we're in the flu season side and people start to cough in a a meeting setting? We don't have masks. I mean, I don't know what's gonna happen, right? And I think that we need to be mindful of our teams.

I would encourage people, I mentioned that we have a lot of things going on, but you know what? Nothing's more important than your family. Nothing's more important than taking time off. Take the time. We have a lot going on, but I emphasize take time off. Public mental health is absolutely critical, and we have to emphasize to our team members to take time off of work.

Get a break check out. The ironic part about this bill, the type of person I was, is no, you don't check out, right? Because in it, everything's always happening. But now check out, take off, go silent. I'm saying those words now that . A few years ago, I've matured where I should say, adjusted that we can't live like that anymore.

It's the, the game has changed. Yeah, it is. And I, I, I have to confess, I was one of those bosses. I, I used to get into the office around five 30. Only because as ACIO you had to get your work done. Yeah. And I could get my work done between five 30 and eight 30. Then you had to interact with your managers and help them to get their work done.

Yeah. And then you just had the deluge of meetings that you had to Mm-Hmm. go to. And so that five 30 to eight 30 time for me was when I actually got my work done, or it was after hours and it was, it was really demanding. But again, I also found myself. Uh, psychologically fighting the fact of saying, Hey, it's six 30, it's seven 30, and no one's in the office yet.

Am I the only one who caress looking at the parking lot, right? Yeah. Looking at the parking lot, my office overlooked the parking lot so I could see it and I was like, why aren't these pe Why don't they care? Why aren't they in here? And you just have to fight that because they do care. We work to live, not live to work, and, and I think that's the biggest, if we haven't learned anything over the last year and a half.

That's it. We have, we have to change our mindset. And what's interesting, other countries have gotten this along before ours, right? Whether it's the siestas or this, and I'm not implying we take days off, but I think Siestas now at Penn State Health, , but, but I think they had some idea, right? They understood that it's not about living to work.

Right. And it's not good. And, and I think from a healthcare IT industry, if we as CIOs and, and other executives, if we continue to go down that road, we are going to perpetuate a, a negative. Industry or a negative culture that in a decade from now we're gonna look back and say, holy cow, we did this and we did something really wrong.

And I think this is the time to do it. I think this is the time we start now saying We have to change. We, we, but we can do things. We can do it. I mieses, but one of my habits now, I, I still get up at five 30. I.

If I could just chime in just two seconds on that one. So like, like you're, you're taking a nap. I, I think I, I do, I did this for a while and, and you get away from it, and particularly in home is take your meetings outside. Take a walk. Walk and talk and, and enjoy the times, right? You can meet with your teams by taking a nice stroll if the day is really nice out there.

One of the things I'm also promoting is since we're mobile, then you can be anywhere, right? You, you don't have to be in your house. I, I try to encourage my team, go to a coffee house, make a secure connection. Go, go, go to the park, you know, do whatever it is. I. Take it in. I, I went, I was in a, a meeting with the team the other day, and I'm gonna create a small competition.

Hey, what, what, what scenery can we do best? So I drove to Central Park and I did some of my meeting from Central Park, right from Pennsylvania to Central Park. So you could do these kind of little things and, and then make a game out of it. Have some fun at it. Let's get back to having fun. I, I think we, we got lost there and I, I just wanted to make sure I emphasize that as that's a way you, you, this is small, little things you could do to help your teams through this really tough time.

Yeah. I'm, I'm careful where I use the word normal, but, but getting back to what life looked like prior to the pandemic, what's gonna be the first conference that you attended in person? Or maybe you already attended one. I wasn't gonna go, but I'm going to attend PIs. And then I'm going to chime. So I'm doing both.

So those are gonna be my two main organizations as there're different times now as they, they've kind of separated. What about you? I'm going to himss. I have some commitments at hims, so I'm gonna go there and I'm also gonna chime in San Diego. So I'm looking forward to, looking forward to catching up and seeing you at both of those.

Same here. Same here. I wasn't sure whether s gonna go but more and I'm.

I. But more and more I'm hearing people are gonna stop in, at, at him. It's always a pleasure to, uh, catch up with you. I guess I'll see you at those two conferences, but other than that, it sounds like you're gonna be busy for the next couple months. Ah, yeah. Yeah, definitely. And, and that's probably why I am a hundred percent not committed because it all depends on how things are going, right.

So everything that I have happening, Hey, to be honest with you, if I, if something's not passing the smell test, I won't be there, right? So. It's, it's just the reality of the world. Yeah. Thanks again. Appreciate your time. Thank you, sir. Take care, man. Have a good one. What a great discussion. If you know of someone that might benefit from our channel, from these kinds of discussions, please forward them a note.

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