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 Awesome. There you go. I think that's as much as I can analyze that data. You know what, this is gonna be an interesting one to follow and we'll close here 'cause we're coming close to the time and I know your day job of being ACIO as opposed to a, a guest host on the show is, is, oh, I love this job too.

It's gonna cut in every six weeks. Right? This is, this is gonna be an interesting one to follow because there's a, a lot of activity, there's almost no one I talk to that isn't exploring how to integrate this into their digital experience, integrate this into their front door. Integrated into their workflows.

And I, I think if you fast forward, let's assume HIMSS next year is a wild success and in, in the spring we have, you know, 30,000 people back. I have a feeling we're gonna have some really fun and interesting stories that people are gonna start sharing. And if we get that good dynamic back and forth, we're gonna see real movement in this.

Sue, always great to sit down with you. I look forward to seeing what your new studio looks like at some point. But, uh, oh, my new hustle. So there you go. I think this is, that's as much as I can analyze that data. You know what, this is gonna be an interesting one to follow and we'll close here 'cause we're coming close to the time and I know your day job of being ACIO as opposed to a, a guest host on the show is.

Oh, I love this job too. . It's gonna cut in every six weeks. Right. But this is, this is gonna be an interesting one to follow because there's a, a lot of activity, there's almost no one I talk to that isn't exploring how to integrate this into their digital experience, integrate this into their front door, integrate it into their workflows.

And I, I think. If you fast forward, let's assume HIMSS next year is a wild success and in, in the spring we have, you know, 30,000 people back. I have a feeling we're gonna have some really fun and interesting stories that people are gonna start sharing. And if we get that good dynamic back and forth, we're gonna see real movement in this.

Sue, always great to sit down with you. I look forward to seeing what your new studio looks like at some point. But, uh oh, and I knew how we got married. Oh, wow. No, I think when we got married, neither one of us was in it. We both went into it at the same time. And then I. Much later he decided to go into the ministry and yes, I've learned much from him as a minister.

And that's a whole different world. Yeah. . So, so the, the movie, the Preacher's Wife is one of my wife's favorite Christmas time. Okay. And you know, one with Whitney Houston and stuff? Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah. That sort of paints, this picture of it is actually a lot harder than somebody would think to be a pastor's wife because it's, there's a lot of, uh.

Well, dynamics, right? It's people. It's people. Yeah. And there's, I gotta tell you, there's expectations on the minister's life, but I was very direct about that and what to expect and not to expect from you. , again, your CIO training. Set clear expectations, communicate them effectively, and then yes. And then yes.

I used to say to my team all the time, expectations are the mother of all disappointments. So if you don't want to disappoint people, make sure you communicate clear expectations. So when somebody said to me, I have I, I'll send you that email this afternoon, and I didn't get it until the next day. They're like, well, I got it to you the next day.

I'm like, expectations are the mother of all disappointments. If you had said, I'll get you that email tomorrow. Yeah, I, it wouldn't have, wouldn't have been a problem. I wouldn't have been expecting it that night. So, anyway, that's a good one. Before that's. So we're gonna talk himss. It's a tough time to be in the in-person event business.

I think we saw that Black Hat had a third of their people drop out of the in-person attendance and go to digital, and I'm not even sure those are the final numbers. I think even more probably dropped out. That was the black guy conference, and I imagine HIMSS is probably looking at the same thing. They say that they're at roughly 20,000 people signed up for digital and on site.

but my guess is just based on conversations I made the decision not to go after a conversation with, with my wife and my family and just, just weighing the risks and professional obligations. I had some sponsor obligations and I just, I, I stepped away from some of those and made the decision that was right for me.

And I think everybody has to do that. It's a tough time to be in the in-person events business. I have the utmost empathy for them. I do too. You use the 20,000 number. They're not publicizing, at least I haven't seen how many of those are actually in person versus digital or virtual. And there were a lot of us, like myself, who in the beginning decided to register for digital and not go to Kim's in August for a number of reasons.

And now, like you, there's probably a lot of people that I guess at the last minute are flipping it. However you do that. So it is a tough time for them to be in business. I registered for the Forum just the other day, and I'm thinking even. How things are going, what's, what's that gonna be like at the end of October?

So that's what, almost three months away? Three months away? San Diego? Very different actually. If HIMSS was in Orlando, I think it would've been a different, I mean different dynamic clearly. 'cause it's Florida versus Nevada, but different dynamic because Hims Orlando is much more spread out, I believe. I mean it's, there's just a lot of opportunity.

To be really creative around that. They could have still done vaccination required, they could have still done masks and social distancing, but I, I think it would've, it might have helped a little. I, I'm not sure it would've helped. We're in the middle of this spike right now and it just, bad timing. Yep.

Yep. And there's hotpot and that's part of it. Maybe if it had, maybe HIMSS was in one of the New England states . Yeah. Which aren't really hot spots. and very highly vaccinated, you know, population maybe, maybe would've been different. But we are where we are. Vaccines work and more people should get vaccinated, right?

Yeah. At this point in time, low sixties is people that have been, uh, fully vaccinated. I think. Don't quote me on that, but I know it's low. Sixties is at least people that have been vaccinated with their first shot. And, uh, now then you still have the other 40%, and actually that varies by state and, and by location.

This variant is a lot more. Contagious. Yep. Than the previous variant. Yes, more people should get vaccinated, but even if you're vaccinated. This is the, uh, HIMSS 21 to require masks for all attendees, and it was a, it was a vaccination only event. I understood that actually, that made perfect sense to me when this came out.

I even thought it should be the case prior to the spike, and the reason was because you can't. It's Vegas. You can't contain the conference to the conference. Okay? So all of us at HIMSS are vaccinated, but that doesn't mean everybody in the casino is vaccinated and everybody, and there's almost nowhere no way to walk around a conference in Vegas without interacting with a ton of people.

It's interesting 'cause again, I, I think it did work against them, but they're gonna, so just getting back to this story, so people are gonna be going. And they are, they're doing a ton of things to make it as safe as possible. Vaccine only re require masks and social distancing based on the guidelines. In this article says, according to himss, more than 18,000 people have registered for digital and in-person experience with new registrations continuing to roll in all primary venues within the HIMSS 21 campus, use hospital grade or better air ventilation systems, as well as GSS neutral.

Dis on all high touch areas. What means assume that's very high grade. Disinfectant cleaner, the ventilation systems in casinos and those buildings is a high grade already. Sure. So, uh, again, from that perspective, I think it's pretty safe. Socially distanced seating options will be provided in all venues.

Exhibit Hall will include wider aisles on the floor with boost space apart. Attendees, exhibitors and staff must complete an onsite attestation confirming compliance with all health and safety protocols, and they go on to say that they're going to, uh, evaluate that on an ongoing basis. Yeah. Let me ask you this question.

You wear two hats. You're a vendor, you're also A-A-C-I-O. You're sitting in the CIO chair right now, right? As ACIO, not going to hims. I mean, does that, does that impact you all that much as ACIO? No, no. And does it impact me all that much? Uh, so many things I wanna say about himss and I also wanna go back to some vaccine comments if I may, but let me answer your question about HIMSS as ACIO not attending himss.

I don't think, especially now, the impact is that big. I have always felt in the past, and, and maybe this sounds a little . I don't know what it's gonna sound like, but in terms of the vendor floor and talking to vendors and seeing vendors for all the organizations that I've served as CIO, I never felt that.

I had to make sure I was there and saw a ton of vendors. 'cause I knew from those organizations I could get the vendors to come to us or talk to us. Okay. So I would work the floor and look for our core vendors to get updated. But then the new stuff, right. So that was always useful. It, it seems like over time you never get enough time to take advantage of some of the education.

Some of the education is very good, right? And maybe the advantage you have if you decide to go all virtual is you can focus on the education. Quite honestly, I did, as I said, register virtual. Maybe that was before we started the recording, and I tried to keep my calendar open. But with my current commitments, that's pretty difficult.

So any tips on some like kind of must watch virtual sessions. I am open to see if I can fit them in. So I'd love to hear what you have to say about that. The networking aspect is always important, but you know, chime, fall form, which I registered for, for late October, and we'll see what that's gonna look like.

That's a whole different kind of networking opportunity. So, can I go back to the vaccine for a minute? I just wanna correct uh, a number you were talking about around 60%. I saw yesterday that . First dose is now at 70%, so that milestone's been hit. That's really good. I'm not sure on both doses. The other thing is more and more healthcare organizations that are requiring it, and we, as of Monday this week, Boston Children's Hospital will be requiring it.

We haven't set the date yet, but we had an open session yesterday with leadership explaining that decision. Did a very good job explaining that decision as a healthcare organization and handled questions that of course people have though 83% of our employees currently are already vaccinated. Uh, fully vaccinated though when you account for what they call associated personnel, which I guess I am as a contractor, 64%, and I think some of that might be they don't know the vaccine status on everybody who's not an employee, right.

One more point I saw yesterday, New York City, and I think you might see these trends. New York City now is saying to go indoor dining and into theater venues, you will have to prove vaccination. Oh wow. Yeah. So you're gonna see more and more I think, of these kind of requirements, um, broadly. Yeah. So for those who aren't in healthcare.

They'll ask this question of they don't understand why you, you could hear from both sides. So let me phrase it from this side. They don't understand why all hospitals don't make it mandatory. It is tricky, isn't it? It's not as, as clear cut as you would think. Now, we had mandatory flu shots every year.

There's a bunch of things I had to get mandatory when I went to work in healthcare that I didn't have to in, in general business. And so it, it's common practice, but this vaccine isn't FDA approved yet, and there's just a bunch of things that are just. Make it hard for every hospital administration to just say, yeah, just like the flu shot, we're gonna do this across the board.

Yeah. I think there is a big difference on the flu shot and yeah, non I. Healthcare systems don't require the flu shots, but you're gonna see more healthcare systems and more other private employers require the vaccine. Uh, it, it's gonna happen. I think one of the complicating factors is the remote and some of my staff in it have asked that question.

If we're remote a hundred percent why we need to get the vaccine, 'cause everybody will be required. But you know, one answer there is. You're not really fully remote. There will be some times where you're coming in and if there was a, an emergency situation where we need everybody to come in, we'd expect you to be there and to be vaccinated.

But I think we won't go into politics, bill, but let's just say, was the blue shot ever in your experience politicized? No, no. Was the vaccine. Yeah. . Yeah. No, it's, it's, you know, yeah. You can get an exemption from the flu shot, I think for medical or religious reasons, probably in organizations. And then you just had to wear a mask.

Uh, you can get those same exemptions for vaccine, but then there's the whole other category of people who won't get it. We could have a, a whole discussion on this, but I don't think that's why people tune into this show. If they want to, they tune on, tune into Andy Slats show, and they could get a full discussion on this.

They, although they, although, although it's pretty much one-sided, but yes, they can get a full discussion on this, um, one sided or not. I say listen to the science and that's one of the things that Boston Children's did a really good job yesterday going over, was helping people understand the science. But I will tell you, I'm reading these articles as they come out and I'm reading studies as they come out.

And can you get covid? Can you be a breakthrough case if you get the vaccine? And I read it. I read one study and it. One in a thousand. And then I read another study out of Massachusetts, which is pretty, and actually was reported on NPR. And I'm looking at it going, that's a much higher rate of people. But now we also know that if you have the vaccine, the impact is a lot less.

And those kind of things, the science seems to support that. Right. I saw another study that said essentially take the vaccines out of it. And you have had covid that's actually proving at this point to be a stronger deterrent. Had covid recovered than getting the vaccine . It seems to have a little bit more legs and longevity, and I'm like, okay.

I'm following these stories. What if I was reading one out of every five of these stories? . I mean, you under, there's so many stories. No, I know. I know. So, , I know you didn't wanna talk about this. I'm laughing though because I saw a cartoon last night on social media. Uh, man is sitting at his computer, woman's walking away, and he goes, honey, honey, I found a piece of information that all the scientists and experts missed,

I, let's leave it there, , right? If, if only they were all in agreement, is what I'm saying. Anyway, you and you and I could have a very dynamic conversation on this 'cause I, in my family, I took the approach of it's your body and. One of my girls had covid and she hasn't gotten vaccinated yet. My other daughter decided to get vaccinated.

My wife just got vaccinated this week up until this week. She was sitting there going, look, I'd like for this thing to get FDA approved before I get it. And I'm like, okay, I understand. I understand. And now it's gotten far enough. She was like in the wait and see category and just wanted a little bit more.

Whatever. And just this week she's like, well, you don't seem to, it hasn't impacted you that much. I guess it's okay. And actually I think we're seeing the vaccination rate take a little tick up right now. It is. It is. Especially in the states that are hotspots where there was low vaccination rates. The concept, and I've talked to people too.

The concept that it's a pandemic of the unvaccinated is kind of a way to frame it. Now, get the vaccine. Should we move on? , you didn't wanna talk about vaccine? I'm trying. No. People are tuning in to listen to us. Talk about what you know anyway. Yeah. So I wanted to, uh, hit on what Epic was gonna talk about at himss.

It's interesting. I heard a. Heard or read somewhere where Judy was saying that the number one thing she wishes would happen is that all these health systems would learn from each other. Yeah. Because she gets the opportunity to talk to all of 'em, and she's just like, if you would just do what this health system has done and if this health system would just do it.

And so I think this is what this is aimed at. It's a collaboration sharing platform where Epic users can go and really learn from one another. That's, that's what I'm, I'm gaining from this. Do you have any more insight on Epic share and what they're thinking? I don't, I applaud them. It, it, in some respects, it didn't sound that new, new, given a lot of the case studies and scoring that they do with their clients and sharing that they already do.

I mean, I have a, I have a book full of case studies from other Epic clients that they sent me as we're talking more about Epic and Cerner, where I am. But . I would just applaud them because somewhere in this article it says something about, oh, overall an Epic spokesperson said they hope attendees take away from him is that Epic goes beyond EHR software alone.

I. They really do look at the health ecosystem in terms of what they're trying to do and contribute, and I, I just think that's a box for them as a vendor. Yep, absolutely. They are also gonna have a feature wall. They're gonna talk about interoperability. Yep. And one of the things they say is out of the box, all of our customers are connected with a hundred percent of each other.

I mean, I understand what they're saying. Have the capabilities there to be connected with a hundred percent of each other as well as every other system that has joined Care Quality. Said an Epic Source person combined the exchange over 8.5 million records every day with around 50% of those exchanges occurring with other vendor systems.

That's so that's one thing. Attendees can also learn about the company's moves around patient access. This is an important space as well. Epic was early to adopt Fire beginning several years ago with the ergonomic project and continuing today said Spokesperson, A full suite of fire resources is available to our customers and patients choose which third party apps they like to share data with.

Using open standards, again, applaud them that they're adopting fire. I think they're trying to spin a story. They may have been, yes, working with fire early on. But to say they weren't an early proponent. They could, may have been an early adopter, but, but no, this is great. I'm glad they're making that move.

I'm glad they're highlighting interoperability. I think they're trying to get a hold of the narrative that Epic is against interoperability. This is a good move to, to get in front of that. Yeah, I agree. And what vendor doesn't do since then, bill. Right. Going back to virtual attendance, have you researched, now that you have flipped, I heard your

How it today and your decision to attend virtually and not in person, how will being able to see stuff about the vendors, have you figured that out yet? I have not figured that out yet. Part of this is I'm signed up as media, so I get about every hour on the hour, I'm getting about 10. Plus emails from various vendors.

So I, I have a pretty good window into what they're trying to do and trying to get out there. And what I'm gonna try to do on the show is identify those that are linked to healthcare delivery, hospitals, and healthcare delivery, and pull some of those in and do shows around them. So, but you know, in terms of the booth experience, I'm not trying to make enemies here.

I'm just trying to make people aware of this. The last chime event I went to and the one before that, I thought they did a good job in terms of visiting the, the sponsors and that kinda stuff. It was as good as they can do from a digital platform. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But it did leave you wanting, it wasn't like exactly.

It, it, it, it's not the same as walking up to a booth and, and I don't need the juggler or the magician or whatever I it, but there's something about having popcorn, the everything. Yeah. There's something about, Hey, let me grab this expert over here, and they pull 'em in and you get the full whatever on that thing.

It's, and it's just hard to pull that off digitally at this point. Yeah. Yeah. Well, they probably, I'll have to do some research this weekend to figure out. How that's gonna work and what I can get from it. I'm always a HIMSS attendee in person, just in time figuring out my game plan. So I'll be a virtual attendee just in time this week trying to figure it out.

I I had your partner, uh, David, months on about two years ago before the himss, and he just had this, he goes, this is, he gave, uh, just a playbook. If you're going to himss, this is what you do. And I'm not sure that's changed. 'cause one of the things I'm doing is, all right, I'm gonna miss out on the networking.

So I literally have a call sheet here of people I'm gonna reach out to and have conversations with that I would normally see at a conference that I'm not gonna see. I'm not gonna let my networking lapse just because they're not doing this event. And I would do the same thing around the, it's not hard to get a list of everyone who's presenting and say, you know what?

I want to learn more about robotic process automation. I think there's gonna be some movement there. Identify the five or six companies that are there, and I. I, I don't know, do a little bit of the, the research people have, they've been on shows like mine and others that are out there, health system, CIO does, uh, webinars as does, uh, health Impact.

There's a lot of different webinars out there that you can really fine tune and, and hone in on things and, and get a lot of information that way. Then you could, uh, you can reach out like you're talking about and have people just do a Zoom session with your team around . What is Olive AI doing around, around robotic process automation?

They'll give you the presentation they were gonna do at himss. Yeah, just at, at the drop of a hat. Really? Yeah. Yeah. You know what I liked back to your, today in health it where you talked about HIMSS and doing virtual, and I love your sell. What approach at the end of every one. That's That's great. You're, so what I think on that one was beyond himss, what are you doing for yourself and your staff to continue to grow and develop and learn?

Right? That's where the opportunity is. Whether it's learning about vendors that you need to know more about and, and potentially bring in or learning what your peers are doing. Yep. Absolutely. And one of the ways that you can learn about what your peers are doing is healthcare IT news over the last three months has done.

A series of really good. I think a series of really good interviews with health system leaders. I'll give, just give you a couple of the titles here. ci CIOs and Innovation Officers bolster Clinical Informatics, cyber Defense and more, and they have four, four people they interviewed How the pandemic has reshaped CIO's views on adaptability, agility, security, and hiring.

CIOs tackled barriers to innovation. Telehealth, integration, analytics, and more pandemic allows CIOs to move with new speed, but cyber threats line weight. Uh, again, this is all part of a series. If you go to Healthcare IT News, click on the HIMSS coverage. This is all part of a series that they've been doing on lessons learned through the pandemic, how IT leaders are re-imagining and repurposing technologies to handle new challenges.

IT execs talk new strategies for analytics, patient engagement, telehealth, more CIOs, plan on refined telehealth, faster deployments, more collaborative tools, and CIO must dos, reduce bureaucracy, boost patient experience, and improve data governance and great set of articles. What I did with you and what we're gonna do today is we both took these articles, we read through 'em, and found like two or three things.

We're just gonna go back and forth, like, yep, these are best practices, what people learned. I'm gonna let you kick it off with Sure. You know, just one of the, one of the, uh, things that you pulled out of these articles. Okay. The one I'm gonna talk about is the second one on the list you gave me how the pandemic has reshaped CIO's views on adaptability, agility, security, and hiring.

And before I go to a particular part there to highlight, thank you for highlighting these. 'cause I think this is an excellent series that I hadn't been watching and I, I, I couldn't help but think as I was reading about your. I sound like a huge fan. I am. I am built. But your series last year during the pandemic, well the pandemic is still with us.

Right? But your series with CIOs, which was much more real time like how are you dealing with things? What have you done? This is a chance, even though it's still with us, for CIOs to, to look back a bit and. What are their key takeaway lessons? So the one I wanna highlight here is from Beth Lindsay Wood, who's the CIO at Moffitt Cancer Center in Florida, and she talked about leveraging a model called Radical interdependence.

RI. Have you heard that? Did they make that up or is that a model that I've not heard of? I have not. Okay. Uh, model called Radical Interdependence to ensure they engage and empower teams to work together, which is so critical. In this remote world. I mean, I, I feel like I continue to struggle with it, with my team, but they seem to be doing better than me.

But they all work together before , right? That's, that's a difference. But she says here, great ideas come from amazing places in the organization. Sometimes leadership needs to get out of the way. Love it. Yes. Sometimes leadership needs to get outta the way. The best thing we can do is let teams work together without walls.

Or differing priorities and allow failure of ideas. My vision of Without Walls is having a big open space with mobile desks that allow people to join teams to solve specific problems. I love that concept. Again, in a still a largely virtual world and a continuing virtual world in some respects, you have that big open space.

It's just a lot of little Zoom boxes on your screen, but you can get to anybody kind of at any time. Without maybe the physical constraints, good and bad on the virtual, I would say I wanted to highlight that. I wanna highlight something else that she talks about . Which was in this section here, getting things done.

And the bottom line of it was they did a lot of recruitment to support growth. They figured out how to recruit during the pandemic, and they also didn't put a lot of their big initiatives on the back burner. They figured out how to get things done through the pandemic to keep major priority initiatives going, which I thought was somewhat inspiring.

Chris Ross, ACIO for Mayo Clinic. Hmm. At the end says, healthcare has some baked in vulnerabilities in its medical devices, open campuses, and for many researchers who prize academic freedom. He said, we cannot eliminate those vulnerabilities, though in the mid and long-term, the medical device manufacturers have to find a better way to work with regulators to stop exposing us to unacceptable risks.

He said, we.

To mitigate unacceptable risks, and we've talked about that several times on the show. I thought. The next thing he says is really interesting. Mayo Clinic's defense PO Posture is multi-part, but we know that software as a service and platform as a service capabilities are inherently more secure and segregated and provide less vulnerability than on-premise computing.

He explained we sold our major data center six years ago and are moving all weekend to SaaS and uh, software as a service and platform as a service providers with a strong trust but verify. Ethos. It's interesting that he would say that. I'm not sure I would go as far to say that I'm a huge cloud proponent.

I think your on-premise computing can be equally as strong as your your cloud provider. But I love his, how he closes that with a trust but verify ethos. And I think that's what we're learning. Yeah. Is we have business associates, we need a trust but verify ethos around, we have . Medical devices. We need a trust, but verify ethos around.

We have software providers. It, it is one of those situations that we live in today, which is just, you can't just buy things off the shelf, put 'em in, and not have a strong plan around keeping them updated, keeping them patched, keeping the firmware modified, but also verifying did they do a good job with that?

We learned this with SolarWinds. That SolarWinds thing was an attack directly on it. Now, it wasn't just healthcare it, it was all of it, but that was directly focused on it and SolarWinds was in use in a lot of places. It was a very inexpensive way to monitor an entire network. We do need to take a trust but verify to every aspect of what we're doing in it.

So I thought that was an interesting lesson learned from, from Chris Ross. What's your next one? The CIOs tackle barriers to innovation, telehealth, integration analytics and more. And I actually wanted to highlight one that is not in that title of the article, and that's the comments from Dan Waltz, who's the CIO at mid-Michigan Health.

You come to value and appreciate people, I think in a different way. You came to know and work with people in a different way. He describes this. One of the natural disasters on top of the pandemic, and there were many natural disasters on top of the pandemic for many organizations. They had a huge flood in that part of Michigan.

I know I talked to him during that time, and he had people who lost their homes on his team that were staying with him in his home. Right. So he talks in this article about the importance of just really connecting to people where they're at, and some of the things that he's done. In working with his team, having virtual lunches every week with people, and that, that personal side of leadership.

And I think that's, I think that's pretty powerful. Not just during this period all the time, , but especially now. You know what, one of the people who I've watched and uh, used to be a, uh, client of mine is, is not right now, is Dr. Milligan. Lee Milligan, yeah. Out of Oregon. He, uh. He writes some of the best letters to his teams and it's personal and it's inspiring, but it also gets the, the job done, and he does that on a pretty regular basis.

He does that kind of stuff. He's very active in social media. If you see any of his people post, he's encouraging them and, and then he is doing all the, the video stuff as well that he needs to do. And I'm sitting there going, that's somebody who recognizes that the office has changed and the office is, now it's Microsoft Teams as part of the office.

Social media is part of the office and email that inbox is, is part of the office as well. And he, he does, you know, video stuff as well. He does a, a great job. And I think that was one of the mindset shifts that happened. I do wanna talk to you about telehealth. I. Actually I'll, I'll start with this and then we'll come back to telehealth.

Okay. So from this article, CIO must dos reduce bureaucracy, boost patient experience, and improve Data. Dr. Uh, Brett Oliver. Okay. With Baptist Health, somebody who I highly respect said, during the past 12 months, Baptist Health and himself has, has learned that the bar has been raised substantially for patient experience and the desire for virtual care.

No longer can health systems think of simply standing up a portal as a simple repository of information. As satisfactory. While the patient experience has always seemed a soft endpoint to me with my clinical background, I historically would concern myself with more quality metrics testifying to great patient care rather than patient's experience.

That has changed with Covid 19. He goes on to say. While touchless check-in two-way, texting way, finding limiting time in waiting rooms started in Covid. Those new expectations have been raised for the industry as we emerge out of the pandemic. That is one of the things I'm hearing, I'm hearing from CIOs and it's interesting 'cause I'm hearing it in a way that is not, I know what I'm doing.

More like, Hey, what are you doing? Because this is a new muscle for us. Not that we didn't do some of this before, but that we're really trying to do this at scale. It's a lot of new skills for us. Not that selecting technology, doing contracts, all that is, but integrating it closely with an eye on the patient.

We can say what we want, but we've been 80% focused on the clinician experience and 20% focused on the patient experience. And we're seeing that tip a little bit and people are going, all right. So are you finding that patients like to interact with texts more than video, more than, uh, telehealth and, and they, they're actually asking those questions.

Okay, where do I get those metrics on my community? Where do I, uh, what tools are best in that category? So I, I'm seeing a lot of people taking a very, a great approach, a very, Hey, I, I wanna learn what's worked in other industries. I wanna work, uh, learn what's working in urban, see what can be applied to rural and those kinds of things.

So I'm using that as a background of expectations have changed, and you and I talked a little bit about telehealth prior to the call. What are we seeing in telehealth right now? Yep. Okay, great. tf, I told you I had some data for you, . So broadly what I hear is, okay, it's leveling out at some point. What's it leveling out at?

Where does it still make sense and how do we make sure that it's a great patient experience and well integrated and workable for the clinicians in terms of their workflows? So. As long as I'm interim CIO at Boston Children's Hospital, I participate in the Children's Hospital Association CIO group. We have a monthly hot topics forum where we can bring up anything.

We have the standard discussion forum where you can pose a question and everybody. Within a short period of time usually answers the questions and helps each other. So I've posed a few out there. It's been very useful. One of 'em that was posed recently was around where are you, where is Telehealth right now?

And the percent ambulatory visits that are Telemed. We're actually Boston Total Hospital at the top of that with 33%. So that's pretty, that's still a pretty high number. There's a couple here in the high twenties and mid twenties percent. There's probably about the bolus of them, maybe a bell curve here are between 10 and 20%.

And then there's just a small handful that are under 10%. And our breakout, 'cause he asked for that and, and that was useful, we kind of to tease it out. So it's 33% in primary care, 25% for specialties. 94% for behavioral medicine, right. And 50% for adolescent medicine. So it's still pretty high. Yeah, that is pretty high.

That's what we're seeing across the board, not just in the children's hospitals. It's roughly that it's uh, 10 to 20 and 20 to 30. What do you think makes a difference between 10 and 30%? Is it the quality of the experience? Is it the offerings? Is it being able to have enough offerings? Maybe there's not a complete set of offerings at some of the systems.

I don't know, but I'm looking at the data here. And the other ones that are 20% and above are in dense metropolitan areas, right? So if you are again, children's hospitals, if you are a parent. A child with a visit that you can do telehealth and not the commute. That probably is a factor in particular in those areas.

Yeah. I mean, I'm just scanning down this list. I'd want to talk to Dallas and Houston. I'd love to talk to Myra. Myra, if I have it right, is that 16%. Texas, Houston. Yeah, because it's not as dense as Boston. Boston's very dense, so it's the dense ones here at the top of this list. Boston, 33% Stanford, so that's very dense.

San Francisco. Yeah. Bay Area, Seattle. That's and dc Yeah, so those are highly dense. The the reason I was talking about Dallas and and Houston is because they're dense. But they're, they're really spread out. Yeah. I mean, you, you could have people driving from Waco to go to Dallas for a, a children's hospital visit.

I mean, that's, that's an hour and a half, two hour drive. One other point I'd make on this would be some of the leading hospitals that have a broader, because of their specialty, a broader reach potentially regionally. Not just if you live in the Boston area to really wanna drive to a visit, if you could do telehealth, but just think of the broader reach for some of the subspecialties and some of the.

Leading children's hospitals. So there you go. I think this is, that's as much as I can analyze that data. You know what, this is gonna be an interesting one to follow and we'll close here 'cause we're coming close to the time and I know your day job of being ACIO as opposed to a, a guest host on the show is, is, oh, I love this job too.

It's gonna cut in every six weeks. Right? This is, this is gonna be an interesting one to follow because there's a, a lot of activity, there's almost no one I talk to that isn't exploring how. To integrate this into their digital experience, integrate this into their front door, integrate it into their workflows.

And I, I think if you fast forward, let's assume HIMSS next year is a wild success and in, in the spring we have, you know, 30,000 people back. I have a feeling we're gonna have some really fun and interesting stories that people are gonna start sharing. And if we get that good dynamic. Back and forth, we're gonna see real movement in this.

Sue, always great to sit down with you. I look forward to seeing what your new studio looks like at some point, but, uh oh, my new house? Yeah. Okay. You'll probably paint the walls the same thing, put up the same paintings, and I don't even know, you know, I can't lose my RBG book, bill . No, there it is. Um, yeah.

All right. Thank you. It's always a pleasure. We cover a lot of good stuff today. Fantastic. Thank you. Have a good hys next week, virtually. Thanks. 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. Perhaps your team, your staff.

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