- This is Laura Dedo with the Becker's Healthcare Podcast.
I'm thrilled today to be joined by Linda Stevenson,
chief Information Officer at Fisher Titus.
Linda, it's a pleasure to have you on the podcast today.
- Thank you for having me. It's great to be here.
- Now I'm looking forward to our conversation
and just really diving into more of
what you're doing at Fisher Titus and some of the big trends
and themes in health it right now.
Before we dive into that discussion,
can you tell us a little bit more
about yourself and your background?
- Sure. I have, uh, had the pleasure
of being the CIO here at Fisher Titus, which is located,
by the way, in Norwalk, Ohio.
It's a rural healthcare organization.
I've been here for five years
and, uh, been in my entire career in healthcare in the
Cleveland area at various large and small organizations.
Really my passion lies in,
in being in the community hospitals
and connecting to the patients in the community.
So, um, pretty excited
that I get to do that here in Norwalk.
- Absolutely. And, you know, where does
that passion come from for community health and,
and really being in a smaller town or providing care
and access to the more rural communities?
- Well, I think it's too, it's a couple things actually.
Um, when you're at a community organization,
you have a deeper connection
to what's going on with the patients.
You're there, you're on site, you see everything.
Uh, you get involved with the community in terms
of community events and the health of the community.
Um, it's also the ability to make change.
I think when you're at a smaller organization like the
community hospitals, um, we have the ability to,
to turn things around pretty quickly and make decisions
and make changes as opposed to a larger organization
where there's a lot of layers.
And while there's sometimes more resources, it's,
it's exciting to see how quickly we can do what we need
to do to improve things for the patient.
- That's such a good point,
and definitely seems like, you know, you're able
to do a lot there fist titis.
So from your perspective, what are the biggest issues
that you're following right now, um, in healthcare for 2024?
- Oh, gosh, so many of them,
but I would say top of mind, uh, we start
with the challenges financially.
It's a continued challenge for us to survive
as a standalone,
and we're one of the few in this area,
standalone community hospital supporting, um, this area in
that our reimbursements are low, the costs are high.
Uh, it's a continued effort with every,
or every area of the organization to try
and find opportunities to improve that.
It's also, um, the need
and the challenge of finding the right roadmap
for technology that helps our patients,
helps our caregivers.
Um, there's never an end to a need for more technology to do
that, whether it's AI or other,
and just finding the amount of resources we need to do that.
- Absolutely. I can imagine, you know,
as you were mentioning, sometimes the bigger health systems
and academic centers have the resources to do, you know,
more, um, big projects.
But being at a a rural
and community hospital, you know,
it definitely takes a little bit more in order to, um,
bring in some of the sophisticated technology.
When you're looking at AI
and some of the other digital transformation efforts,
how do you prioritize
and think through, you know, what's going
to be most essential for me,
especially on a potentially limited budget, um,
from the hospital system?
- Yeah, I work really closely
with the leaders in the other departments.
So being a CIO is no longer just managing a bunch
of technology behind the scenes.
It's, it's much more
of a business partnership than it's ever been.
We meet on a regular basis to say,
what are the challenges you're having
and what are the opportunities that I can bring a solution
to improve for you?
Uh, so we do a lot of that
and then bring it all together on the roadmap to say, okay,
across the organization, here's the resources I have
from a people perspective, and here's how we can
and put that roadmap together to get the,
the biggest rocks first.
Right? We need to solve the biggest problems first so
that we can continue to fund other things
and continue to improve quality.
Uh, and you just have to wait each of those
with the leaders coming together at the table.
And I think that's been the beautiful thing about Fisher
Titus is our senior leadership team works so closely
together to align priorities across the
board, not just for one area
- That makes sense.
And it, you know, it is really helpful
and encouraging to hear.
Um, when you look into the next year,
what are you most excited about and what makes you nervous?
- Well, the finances make me nervous.
Um, but the bottom line is just trying to get, um,
as many things automated as possible
to reduce the burden on all of the staff is going
to be helpful, uh, given that, uh, concern of course.
And the next thing is the amount
of people I have to do all those things.
So, so that's the biggest concern.
The biggest opportunities, I think are our ability
to make a difference in that automation.
Um, helping both nurses
and our revenue cycle ease their
burden and the work that can be done.
And then also, uh,
the digital transformation with our patients.
Putting the patient at the center,
allowing our digital changes to impact the patient,
get them more engaged in their care,
streamline their ability to come here,
give them great access.
Um, I'm really excited about that.
- Absolutely. That's great to hear.
And certainly, you know, a lot
to be excited about when you think through, um,
the opportunities and how a technology can be leveraged in
different ways and, and really automation can
support so many different efforts.
Um, one of the things you mentioned kind of stood out to me,
um, in terms of looking at, you know,
having the team in place to do what you need to do, um,
how do you think about growing
and developing the IT team and capabilities?
What do you do in-house?
Is there anything that you are outsourcing
or partnering with others to, um, try to get done?
Um, what's your strategy there?
- Yeah, I think that there's a couple of things that we do.
I'm, we have, uh, a team of only 40 people,
and I, I, they're fabulous.
I, you know, I encourage education.
I encourage them to do research
and we very rarely rely on outside resources
because I think that my goal for them is dig in,
do the research, figure it out,
and then they learn by doing that.
Actually there's some of the best resources around in terms
of the knowledge of the system, even at the point where some
of the vendors look to them to say, how did you do that?
Which is awesome. Um, you have to encourage them to say,
you know this, you can do this.
Give them the education, give them the support.
There are times when we need to reach out
and do out, uh, use outside resources.
I try not to, but we have to occasionally.
Um, and then the other thing is, um, looking at
training them in areas to support to,
for cross training in areas
that they don't normally support,
which would makes them a more well-rounded resource.
- Got it. That makes a lot of sense.
And, you know, are most of them local in the community
or have you expanded it
and just have a more hybrid virtual team?
- Well, yes and no.
So we, most of our staff is remote.
Uh, they are, well, it's a hybrid.
They're on site about one one day a week,
sometimes two days a week,
depending on the type of role they have.
They all, however, are local, not maybe local to Norwalk,
but local to northeast Ohio.
So they do have the ability to come on site as needed.
But I, you know, I think it's important to give them
that flexibility for work-life balance of, of being able
to work in whatever environment suit them best.
We have explored having people outside of the state and,
and, and would, are still open to that.
We've been blessed in that most of the,
the opportunities have been filled with local talent.
So it's been great. And working in a rural hospital,
the culture is here that it's nice.
People like to see people.
And so having people local whenever possible is our goal.
- I a hundred percent agree.
I, I think that's amazing, you know, feat
that you've been able to accomplish in terms
of building the team that you have to really support, um,
the hospital locally and, and, um, people by
and large being, as you mentioned in the Ohio area, so that,
you know, um, they're really connected it seems like,
to the hospital and to the mission.
Um, when you look ahead, you know, are, are there,
what skills do you see needing your team to expand or grow
and continue to develop, um,
to make sure you're supporting the things like artificial
intelligence and other, um,
potential technologies coming into the system?
- Yeah, I think there's a couple of areas we're working on.
Obviously some dependency on data
and analytics is, uh, we're really pushing for a few
of the team to be more involved in learning data, you know,
app applications of data scientists, um, different types
of cloud enhanced application, things like that.
Uh, pushing some people in that regard,
but also some of the others.
I think the goal is to really educate them on what it's like
to be more of a business partner than just an analyst.
I don't want team to be the people
who just take tickets and requests.
I want them to be business partners
with the departments they support,
where they're gonna be more proactive in reaching out
and proposing solutions.
So that's a little bit of work
'cause it's a change in how they've been thinking all
of the, all of the years they've been here, um,
working a lot on that.
And it's not a technical training,
but more of a shift in thinking.
- That makes a lot of sense.
You know, and it's such a helpful way to think about
that sea change of kind
of the cultural transformation within the IT department
and integrating that into the broader system.
When you're looking again, um, you know,
over the next couple years we've talked a lot about some
of the changes that are happening in the healthcare space
as well as what technology can bring.
Um, what do you will most effective healthcare leaders need
in order to be successful over the next two to three years,
especially given some of these changes
and capabilities that are becoming available?
- Um, if I had to pick one thing I have,
I'd have to say it's data.
They need data. They need analytics
because there is such a need to really manage
so closely your budgets
and your work that if they don't have the right information,
how can they effectively do that
and make suggestions on changes.
So I think that is the number one thing we're spending time
and resources on.
And then beyond that, it's getting those same leaders,
the education on data literacy so they can,
they understand what they're doing.
- Absolutely. And I can imagine
that can't come quick enough.
- Absolutely. - Linda, thank you so much
for joining us on the podcast today.
This has been such a fun and informative conversation
and I look forward to connecting with you again soon.
- Thank you so much for having me,
and I look forward to future conversations.
- It's so important for leaders at the top of organizations
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