This is Laura Dierda with the Becker's Healthcare
podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined by
Chris Carmody, chief technology officer at UPMC. Chris,
it's a pleasure to have you on the
podcast today. Thanks for having me, Laura. It's
great to talk with you again.
Now I'm looking forward to our broader discussion.
I know every time we have you on,
I learned so much. And, really, our listeners
take away a lot of the nuggets and
tidbits that you've learned along the way for
any of the processes and,
changes that you're making. But before we dive
in, can you tell us a little bit
more about UPMC and what makes it unique?
Sure.
UPMC
is the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, just
to spell out that acronym.
But we are a a very large
academic medical center with
a few add ons,
in terms of our core mission, which includes
being an insurer in the different communities and
and areas that we serve,
provide and provide patient care.
We also have a an arm of our
institution which focuses on
commercialization and emerging technologies called UPMC Enterprises,
which, again, works very closely with
the core technology groups and teams and operations
and helps identify and or create new solutions
and looks to commercialize them.
And then lastly, we have an international arm
at UPMC,
which we have a number of hospitals located
over in Ireland and Italy and,
are are building, some sites in Croatia right
now that export our clinical expertise
in those different,
countries and and helps,
share some of the great,
knowledge and, again, medical care that we provide
at UPMC.
So
all those different aspects really make us who
we are at UPMC.
We are primarily in Pennsylvania. We're the largest
nongovernmental
employer in Pennsylvania, around a hundred thousand employees.
So we are large,
but we are very much all focused on
providing the best patient care that we can
to all the patients that we see and
all the communities that we serve.
That's amazing to hear. I know UPMC, as
you mentioned, has grown over the years into
really a strong enterprise and having different
global reaches and those kinds of things. And
so,
I I think that's really amazing to kinda
see some of this progress and then, you
know, look ahead.
But I'm curious, first and foremost,
could you tell us a little bit about
an accomplishment that you're most proud of from
the last year or so?
Yes. And it's not quite finished yet, but
just,
about a year and a half ago, UPMC
embarked on the largest transformation project that we've
ever taken, at least in my twenty six
plus years at UPMC.
And that is
to help transform how we deliver care across
UPMC.
And, really, the the basis for that is
implementing a single electronic health record,
at UPMC.
So today, as we sit here
at the February,
we currently operate 10 different electronic health records
at UPMC
based upon a a best of breed approach,
which we instituted years and years ago,
as well as through some acquisitions more recently
with different hospitals and physician practices.
And, of course, with every EHR that you
have, there's numerous ancillary systems that
are attached or interface with that core EHR.
So we have
well over a thousand
ancillary systems,
touching those
10
EHRs.
And quite honestly, it was during COVID
when we were trying to be nimble and
and change direction and meet all the different
requirements that were constantly evolving and changing,
where
we were encountering the difficulty of making a
change and having to replicate it in different
systems was
quite challenging.
And
just
to provide what appears to be a seamless
experience to our clinical users and our patients
utilizing our technologies,
our IT teams
have done monumental work
just to give that appearance and and build
interfaces
and and move data around
to
do the best we can with the technology
that we have. And and like I said,
we've done an amazing job over these years
to provide that experience, but,
you know, we feel most of the time
like we're sprinting a marathon.
And our talented,
knowledgeable
experts in IT, we can be using utilizing
their skill sets
to work on more advancements quite honestly in
different technology. So
all these different reasons led us to moving
forward with this single project, which we are
now in a very critical our first
wave go live is later this year in
September that we're preparing for.
And so, really, that accomplishment, getting back to
your question,
is all the prep work that we've done,
forming the team,
building the relationships, and and defining how we're
gonna deliver care consistently and standardized across all
VPMC leveraging this one EHR.
That's amazing to hear, you know, and a
huge undertaking. Impressive to see that you've been
able to develop over the last few years
the plan and start implementing it. And then
I know the go live is,
coming up here in just a couple of
months. From this whole process, do you have
any advice for other health systems that are
going through a similar thing? I know,
you know, you taking this on after the
pandemic and realizing the value of it is
huge, but others are are seeing a similar,
similar trajectory in terms of how they're thinking
about their technology in EHRs as they grow
bigger. So what advice would you have for,
IT leaders as they're embarking on this process
or, you know, really,
aiming to refine what they've already done?
Yeah. I think it it starts with the
planning process.
The the the more you plan, the more
open discussions, transparent discussions you have with all
the key stakeholders,
the better position an organization will be in.
And I think that's what's
helped facilitate our success so far in this
project is the relationships and and the leadership
that we partner with
both from a clinical perspective and operational perspective,
revenue cycle,
patient access, all the different areas across your
institution
need to be engaged and involved in in
the decision process
and helping define
collectively how the organization moves forward. This is
not an IT project by any means. It's
enabled by IT, but this truly is an
organization transformation
that we're embarking upon. And and a lot
of the other
big health care systems that are in the
same boat that are that are moving to
one EHR or doing this transformation.
As we talk and discuss and and we
have that opportunity,
at different events and just reaching out based
upon our professional relationships, talking to one another,
You know, we're able to share some of
those insights and information, what works well, what
doesn't work well.
But the more information, the more planning can
do is the the the
positions your organization to help
minimize the risks and minimize the issues as
you move forward. There's gonna be things that
come up,
and you you're best prepared by planning for
them,
because the project is never gonna go exactly
as planned. It doesn't work that way. Not
no project ever has,
especially one of this size and scale.
That's helpful to know. Thank you so much,
Chris, and glad that you're able to find
colleagues to support throughout this journey, because I
can imagine it it takes,
as much, as you said, information and support
as
possible. Now looking ahead for the next twelve
months or so, what are the big growth
opportunities you're looking for,
for your team as well as the health
system altogether?
Yeah. I mean, it it again, it starts
with
that that the core transformation. Our our wave
one, we're gonna,
deploy across about a little over 40% of
the organization,
you know, and go through that
post,
post go live world where we're supporting and
fixing any issues or,
you know, questions that users may have. And
then we're gonna move right into our wave
two, which will happen in the probably closer
towards the end of the second quarter of
twenty twenty six,
where the rest of our organization will go
live.
So that's really our our main focus right
now is preparing and ramping up for both
waves as we refer to them.
But we don't lose sight that we're still
delivering care
24 by seven in our institution. So
we continue to,
you know, focus on what are the operational
needs today.
How do we prioritize that work and make
sure that from a timing perspective,
you know, when does it make sense
to connect to the existing environment,
maybe a new technology, or
wait and and position a new technology to
be tied into the new single EHR platform?
So that's where
a lot of our focus and effort's gonna
be.
And, again, on the IT side of the
program is making sure that we're testing and
validating everything along this journey
and partnering with
our clinical and operational leaders to make sure
that
the their our end users are ultimately ready
and prepared for when we flip that switch
and move them over to the new system
and environment.
So a a lot of communications, a lot
of planning, a lot of meetings, discussions.
But,
for us at UPMC, I feel very,
confident that we're gonna be successful because of
those partnerships, because it's not an IT project,
as I mentioned before,
that,
everyone has skin in the game. Everyone is
laser focused on what the outcome of this
is gonna be, which is
a much better opportunity, much better tools and
technology for all of our clinical users to
use to deliver patient care more effectively, more
efficiently, and ultimately impact the quality of care
that we're delivering.
That's great to hear. And, you know, an
amazing picture that you're painting of what things
will look like once this is all rolled
out, once you have that single instance of
the EHR or being better able to serve
patients as well as, a better experience for
clinicians too.
But I'm curious. There has to be challenges
that you're,
anticipating or or things that you're troubleshooting right
now.
Could you tell us a little bit about
some of those challenges that you found or,
headwinds that you really see coming up in
the future?
Yeah. I mean, right now, from, the the
project itself, a a lot of it is
just working through you know, we we went
through the planning process, the planning phase. We
went through a significant build phase for many
different organizational decisions were made, and that constitutes
change
for our end users. So, what we're what
we're working through in a very
detailed level is identifying what are those what
are those changes and how how does that
influence or,
customize our training materials. So when we're out,
close to go live and we're training everyone,
they know what you know, this is what
you this is how you did in the
past, and this is how you're gonna do
it in the new system. So making sure
we close those gaps
and and properly train and and prepare everyone
is probably,
you know, front of mind right now. On
the IT side, it's,
working through some of the challenges with, you
know, dealing with existing data and ingesting that
data into the new environment or
archiving and moving that data out and making
it available
to make sure that from an analytics and
reporting perspective, we have that full longitudinal record
on all of our patients,
where where we need it. So we're working
through a a lot of those details.
We're we're
ingrained in all that work right now.
So those and and, again, it's just the
the volume, as I mentioned before, is probably
what creates the the challenges and the complexity
of our environment
that that is creating,
you know, the the awareness that we we
gotta
double and triple check our work
as we move forward to make sure that
we don't miss anything or,
you know, as issues arise that we we
fix them. And that's the whole purpose of
going through this process. That's why you, you
know, work
collectively together to plan and and build and
define the environment and then testing it, which
is where we're at to to validate that
things are working or you know, again, you
don't wanna test your your environment and be
a % correct out of the gate. You
wanna find those those issues or or,
you know, defects before you go live. And,
you know, that's that's where we're at right
now, and that's a normal natural process,
that we're going through. The other thing too
is the continual care and feeding of our
teams. Everyone's, you know, heads down working very
hard. We don't want folks getting burned out.
So we really spend a lot of time
communicating and reaching out and making sure that
they feel they have the support of the
leadership team. If they have questions, concerns
that, you know, they they feel comfortable raising
their their their hand and, you know, asking
for that help or asking for us as
leaders
to remove any barriers or issues that might
be in their way. So that's that's, I
I I think, a very key part of
advice I'd give
to those going through this this journey that,
you know, from a leadership perspective,
you you have to be front and center
and present and and, you know, remove those
barriers and obstacles for your teams to be
successful.
And that is great advice. And a really
strong point, you know, looking at just the
amount and gravity of this transition, this change,
and then,
having to do, I can imagine, the big
picture strategic work as well as the detail
oriented,
aspects of it, making sure you have the
right people on your teams to execute on
that,
in a meaningful way.
You know, I can imagine now
it looks different potentially than it will,
once the rollout is complete and you've got
that single instance and and can focus
on other things. But, right now, it seems
like, as you mentioned, having that detail orientation
and just being able to support the team
in whatever way you can, is really, really
important.
Absolutely.
Before we wrap up here, I'm wondering,
could you talk a little bit about just
the number one thing that you're doing right
now to set your organization up for long
term success?
Yeah. I mean, obviously,
remove the EPIC or the EHR specific project.
We are moving EPIC, by the way, if
I didn't mention that, but,
it's it's pretty well documented. But I think
the the one thing, the one piece that
we're focusing on is our people.
And it gets back to my last statement
of making sure that we have that that
the proper engagement,
that we're providing the different opportunities and training
and and really career paths for them. The
the toughest thing in our business of health
care IT is, you know, developing and and
retaining
great staff and and great leaders in our
organization. So we spend a considerable amount of
time outside of that project
talking through and planning,
from a people and organizational perspective on what
we can do, what we can do better,
how we we can better support them, how
we can create new opportunities,
how we can better align
our teams to be most successful with the
business.
And when you have new emerging technologies like
artificial intelligence coming, that that's a great area
where the market's kinda driving,
obviously, a lot of clinical and operational users
to wanna adopt AI.
And we as IT teams and leadership have
to be ready and prepared to align, our
teams and give them the right training and
position them to be successful and help support
in the organization moving forward. So, you know,
we we we spend a considerable amount of
time focused on in doing those activities. You
know, it's not just the, hey, once a
year performance evaluation kind of stuff. It's having
conversations. It's being accessible and and having conversations
with teams, with individuals
to make sure that, you know, we're listening
to them and their needs and their concerns,
or or their suggestions on how we can
do things better and then applying that. So
we we take that very seriously. And, again,
I think our our people are the number
one area that we focus in on and
will continue to focus in on moving forward.
Technology, as we all know, is comes and
goes, and there's gonna be new trends and,
new emerging technologies that are can continue to
be thrown at us. If you don't have
good people, strong people that can problem solve,
that can work together, that can communicate,
that feel the support of their leadership team,
you're not gonna be successful. So that's that's
where it starts and ends from my perspective.
That's amazing to hear. And, you know, really,
really a strong message in terms of supporting
your team, making sure you have what you
need, and then,
have letting them, you know, do the best
work they possibly can. Chris, thank you so
much for joining us on the podcast today.
This has been a great conversation, and I
look forward to connecting with you again soon.
Sounds great, Laura. Thank you.