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This is Scott King with the Becker's Health
Care podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined
by Garrett Olin, chief information officer at Shasta
Community Health Center. Garrett, thanks so much for
joining us today. How are you doing?
I'm doing well. Thank you for the invitation.
Of course. I think we're having a great
conversation about a lot of the big opportunities
and challenges
in health care today. But before we dive
in further, could you please just tell us
a little bit about your background?
Sure. I've been in, technology. I've been the
CIO for, oh, about thirty five years now.
Been with Shasta Community Health Center for about
a year and a half.
Shasta Community Health Center is a
a federally qualified health center.
We're the largest in Northern California. We're located
in Redding,
about halfway between Sacramento and the Oregon border.
What are some of the accomplishments
over at Shasta that you're most proud of
from the past year?
Well, last year was a busy year for
us.
We actually opened a a new building
and unexpectedly
bought a a second building,
both of them around 35,000
square feet.
And in doing so, we consolidated
a number of our locations that were leased
and and basically relocated about 75%
of our staff,
over about a six month period.
So it was just good for everyone just
working together as a team,
getting everything up and running and
and everything, you know, working properly.
And then the other thing is just
we
when I came on, took a look at
what we had and
developed a,
stand alone,
cybersecurity,
department
and have been increasing our security posture.
I believe we we've been hearing more and
more about cybersecurity in these interviews. How much
is of an undertaking is that to kinda
just make sure everything's updated and current in
your system?
Oh, it it's never ending. I'm sure,
you know, it's it's one of those things
of,
you know, not a question of if, but
when.
We have,
you know, started with
a department of two. We're on to three
this year.
Our spend is, you know, increased.
We are
looking at just, you know,
best practices and and securing things down to
to the best of our ability.
It it's been an effort. It's always ongoing.
So, you know, we'll we'll see where it
goes, but we we feel we have a
a a pretty good standing at the moment.
What are the big kinda headwinds or challenges
you're anticipating for the next year or two?
Cybersecurity is always number one for us. You
know, we need to protect our patients' data,
obviously.
Like, I'm sure that you've heard from any,
you know, artificial intelligence machine learning
looking at that.
How do we, you know, implement it and
do it ethically,
the security around that also,
of patient data.
And then just,
finding the talent,
for both of those when you're in a
more rural area.
In terms of
finding staff to to kinda monitor things, like,
especially like cybersecurity, is that is there a
growing need for that? Is that, you know,
more employees than it it would have taken
just a few years ago?
Not necessarily more, because a lot of things,
you know,
can be more automated nowadays.
And,
more and more of the cybersecurity is also
implementing artificial intelligence.
You know, you you use it to
not only are are we using it to
secure ourselves, but, obviously, the the threats are
using it to try to break in.
So
it it's more
figuring out those gaps. So like I said,
you know, we went from two to three
this year.
I don't anticipate
that department needing to grow more as we
just utilize more,
and and better tools.
You mentioned some automation.
Obviously, with AI now, so many things are
benefiting from that to be automated.
How's your health system using AI, and and
do you have a lot of people kind
of consistently
checking? Yeah. We're still kinda just dipping our
toes in it. You know, we we've used
it on a digital health side of things,
you know, implementing chatbot and
and, for patients to answer some of those
easy questions that that they may have, more
common questions and things.
And and starting to integrate into our EHR,
we've been looking at the ambient technology to
create notes.
But we're we're kinda unique in the fact
that we have live scribes for our providers.
So they the the live scribes do more
than most of the Ambient technology can do,
like entering orders and making referrals or or
at least entering referrals for the providers to
just review and and,
authorize.
So it's a little more challenging
because if if our provider uses the Ambient
tech,
they actually have to do more,
or there's an increase of expense of utilizing
the Ambient technology and still having the LiveScribe.
So we're trying to balance that. We we
do think that we have found
a product that can also include the order
side of things. So it will be more
like a a LiveScribe at that point,
and we're starting to test that now.
When you look back at your career and,
you know, at the time you first started
in health care up to now, how do
you think you've evolved as a leader?
I guess it's just understanding that
every provider, you know, every specialty has its
own
needs.
They're very unique about how they they need
things done.
And just working as a team and and,
you know,
working to people's strengths. Right?
If you have a gap, trying to fill
that gap in your team with that strength
and just,
really building relationships.
You know, I think I've done that my
entire career, not just within health care, but
having those relationships so that that I can
trust who I'm dealing with and they can
trust dealing with me.
You know, that's that's the big thing.
How how important is
trust in a health system setting versus, you
know, just like you know, I don't know
if you know if you ever had, like,
a regular office job, but you just kinda
talk about a regular office job versus the
trust that's needed in in health care when
you have, you know, obviously, patients depending on
you.
Yeah. I think the the the difference is
the type of data that you might be,
dealing with. You know, I I've had, you
know, if you pull the the regular office
job and and things like that,
where the the data may not be as
sensitive
compared to, you know,
having access and and knowledge of,
patient's diagnosis
and medications
and,
insurance and and what have you.
You know, it
it it really comes down to
the the level of trust that you need
to make sure that, you know, we're all
taking care of things the way we need
to.
You know, we we had mentioned the the
cybersecurity of things. Right? So
the, you know, our end users are the
weakest link,
in in any chain,
around a a potential breach. So, you know,
we we need to make sure that we're
training staff properly
and
that, you know, we can identify those areas
where we may be weak and strengthen them
and,
and and have that trust in each other
to do the right thing.
Garrett, thanks so much for the great conversation
and for joining the podcast. Look forward to
working with you again soon.
Alright. Appreciate it, Scott. Have a good day.
You too.