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Keynote (Rewind): CIO Strategies That Work and Paving the Path to the Future

Bill Russell: My name is Bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of This Week Health, where we are dedicated to transforming healthcare one connection at a time. Our keynote show is designed to share conference level value with you every week.

Now, let's jump right into the episode.

(Main) In healthcare I T, we often focus on the technology - the systems, the integrations, the innovations. But what about the leaders who navigate this complex landscape? Today, we're diving into the minds of healthcare's digital pioneers - from those who built I T departments from scratch to those wrestling with  A.I's promise. Their stories reveal a profound truth: the greatest challenges in healthcare technology aren't technical - they're human.

One is human resources and focus on the team and on employee. Keep them turned on and ready to go and advancing their career and grow. And then I think the second area is just around budget.

Money is always difficult. Budgets are always tough. And trying to marry budget with human resources with the delivery of services. Is a juggling act, and it's always trying to do more with a little less.

Bill Russell: Building great teams is just the beginning. As one leader discovered, sometimes you have to redefine what leadership even means in your organization...

Deborah Proctor: culture isn't an add-on. It's everything about the organization.

So if people who come in to work with you don't understand the organization, their ability to be successful in the organization is really compromised.

Donna Roach: We're like onto Our fourth digital roadmap. So now we're developing our 2024 one. but if I showed you a picture of where we were to where we're at now, just the visual itself shows you the complexity and how it's been added on to and the.

The changes that have occurred, which really it's makes you feel really good that. You tapped into something that helps guide and direct you. We do a Heal at Home program and looking at hospital at home, and there's other things too, when we think about remote care, and how we can, yeah.

And kind of raise the water level of the quality of care. for me, that's what drives me, but that's also one of the missions of University of Utah

Bill Russell: That complexity can be overwhelming, especially when you're the first to chart the course. Imagine walking into an organization that's never had a CIO before...

Susan Ibanez: I did bring a playbook with me based on my experience at other organizations . But stepping into this role as the first CIO even had to take a step back from that.

So you really had to start at. The grassroots level, what was a CIO and why do they need one, and what was the difference that it was gonna make? And, how many people do you need in an IT department? All of those things. Before you could even start talking about what we are very accustomed to discussing, is it strategy and, what our roadmap looks like and what governance looks like.

Bill Russell: Starting from scratch requires mastering the fundamentals - and few fundamentals are more critical than communication...

The path to the CIO newcomers always ask me what do I need to do today to become a CIO? And one of the things I tell 'em is the path to getting into that chair are so varied and yours is pretty varied as well. I mean, just that portion of it alone is pretty interesting. You didn't study technology, you didn't study programming or anything to that effect you, you went the physician round.

Is there a direct path to the CIO chair and talk a little bit about your path.

Lee Milligan: Maybe in, in some systems, probably not. In, most, certainly not in mine. I, I do think it comes down to the classic three things, people, process, and technology on, on the people front. It's really about effectively interacting with others, and that's all about developing your eq.

And so focusing on that I think is a really important thing to do. I also think speaking effectively. Is key. And I'm not just talking about big speeches that you give, but really every time you speak in front of your CEO, you're re auditioning for your role. And every time you speak to your subordinate, and I learned this, the hard way, they amplify what what you say.

So you have to be mindful of what you say and make sure that you're saying things in a way that that really makes sense. I think from a process perspective, bill, we always have to be curious and always have to ask. Are we doing this the right way? Is there a better way to do this? And be hyper-focused on that to the extent you can.

And that takes work.

Bill Russell: But effective communication is just one piece of the puzzle. In today's data-driven world, strategy requires a different kind of thinking...

Chuck Podesta: with the strategic planning, we have our president's council, which is the people that report to the CEO but there's also another individual there that doesn't report to the CEO and he's the chief Analytics officer.

Because we cannot, unless we can apply analytics, to a business problem, don't know what the problem is. We kind of know what the problem is. I'll give you an example of migration.

And I'm front and center with, here's where the industry is going. Here's where AI is going. Here's the areas where AI can be brought to the forefront to drive strategy. That's my job now. And it's not to sit back and wait for the CNO or the CEO or somebody to say I have this problem and here's this technology that I need.

Can you vet it, make sure it's secure and then go implement it for us.

Bill Russell: Making strategic decisions often means taking calculated risks. And sometimes, the best risk assessment comes from unexpected experience...

Joel Klein: we all have our, our thermostat of where we are willing to set, risk tolerance. When you've had to actually, walk the walk in a clinical space, you're gonna set it, maybe a little bit differently than someone who's never had to do that.

And yeah, that might mean taking on more risk, or it might mean, not just cybersecurity risk, but, other kinds of risk as well. But you at least are doing it knowing, what the troops need and what the patients need and what their families need. And if you say you know what, I know they need this, but we can't do this.

Then you're going to have the credibility of someone who's actually, lived it,. Because, of the time you took to go and see it or experience it.

Bill Russell: That lived experience becomes even more valuable when we're building diverse teams and challenging long-held assumptions...

For example, I don't have a clinical informatics certification. Now, if you're only looking for someone with a clinical informatics certification because your HR system has a checkbox, I'm not gonna get in that group.

So I think it's making sure that as a leader, you just question what you never had to question before to make sure your teams. Have a diverse set of ideas

so I think it's really a paradigm shift in the way we always used to think, if you're really trying to get. A diverse set of ideas or people and have that one person in the room that may not be afraid to raise their hand and say, but why would we do that? That looks like this or that, right?

Yeah.

Bill Russell: As we look to the future, these lessons become even more critical. Because AI isn't just another technology to implement - it's a fundamental shift in how healthcare organizations must think and operate...

appropriately putting into place a structure that doesn't slow you down but sufficiently mitigates risk. And then most importantly, just like digital, starts back informing the change management exercise. And what do I mean by that? Do not create a whole siloed structure. This is going to be a new way of being.

This concept needs to back inform the committees you already have. If you've got clinicians, Working on clinical standardization, the AI capability and enablement over time needs to be part of that discussion, not its own committee, not its own discussion. The same is true with security. AI is going to bring upon us some new implications around IT security.

And that means coming alongside other senior executives. and help them understand how they need to create that competency with their own divisional structures. We can't have these bloated, here's a new AI function, here's a new innovation function, here's a new IT function, here's a bloated analytics function.

In this day and age, those capabilities need to be something, over time, it's going to take time, that we need to build into the expectations of every single role in the organization, because we know at the end of the day, we're knowledge workers and people working on knowledge through digital and these new tools is changing.

So it can't sit on an island.

As we stand at the threshold of healthcare's next chapter, their wisdom echoes: sustainable change doesn't come from creating new silos or chasing the latest trend. It comes from weaving innovation into the fabric of who we are as organizations. The question isn't whether A.I. or the next big thing will transform healthcare - it's whether we're building the leadership, the culture, and the human connections to make that transformation meaningful.

In healthcare I T , we're not just managing systems - we're enabling healing. And that starts with understanding that our greatest technology has always been, and will always be, each other.