This is Laura D with the Becker Healthcare
care Podcast. I'm thrilled today to be joined
by Chris Car, Chief Technology Officer and Senior
Vice President of the information technology
division at Up.
Chris is pleasure to have you on the
podcast today.
Thank you for having me, Laura.
Now, I'm really looking forward to our discussion.
I know there's only many things that Up
is doing on the technology side as well
as Ai that has been really revolutionary and
helping to accelerated digital transformation in very much,
you know, on the cutting edge of of
how technology can be used in health care.
But before we dive into that discussion. Can
you tell us a little bit about yourself
and your background?
Sure. I've been at Up c now. This
is my 26 year.
Not all 26 have been in my current
role. I've done a lot of different jobs
over the course of my career, which has
been
fantastic.
From a learning perspective and growth
for my career. But
I love being in healthcare
I I find it to be so rewarding
even though I'm not a clinical person, but
I'm able to use my talents and abilities
and skills to help contribute to how we
deliver care for our patients and how we
support our members of our health plan, and
which is great. But
my my academic career, I actually was an
accounting major
a long time ago in the early to
mid nineties
and actually started working at 1 of the
local banks here in Pittsburgh
and got into It through college and in
earlier in my career and then ended up
going to as an It auditor,
I had no idea what that was when
I got the job, but
again, it was a great learning experience cut
to dive deeper into different technologies and platforms.
And in conjunction, I I pursued my N
mp and then also a second master's degree
in information system. So yes, that's a pretty
quick summary of a long career at this
point.
Yeah. For sure. And you know, your experience
was in the field, It's just been fascinating.
So, kind of looking at where we're at
today, what are some of the biggest issues
that you're following in health care what's really
top of mind for you?
I think there's a lot of challenges in
healthcare today as we,
you know, still refer back to, you know,
post pandemic health care world.
Things have changed, and I don't think they're
going back to the way they were
prior to the pandemic. And a lot of
that is for the better, like,
you know, delivering care, where our patients needed,
whether it's in their home,
it's, you know, mobile remote or if it's
in 1 of our facilities.
Obviously, everyone's challenged with
the impact that the economy and inflation has
had on the expense side of health care.
And how we're managing to become more efficient
effective with that. And I'd be remiss not
to call out the cybersecurity challenges that
continually
persist with the healthcare industry and
we have to be diligent as we introduce
new tech technologies as we maintain
our existing technologies and processes.
And obviously our people to keep them attentive
to
the various attacks that we're experiencing on a
daily basis.
So
a lot of challenges for healthcare in
in 20 24 and beyond
Absolutely. And you know, I I think as
all of those things are so very much
top of mind for executives across the board.
And in particular, looking at some of recent
cybersecurity issues. I know things changed so quickly
in the field in sophistication of those types
of attacks
you know, has been increasing several fold in
even the recent months. And so, you know,
when you look at your strategy,
and and and then they also keeping in
mind, some of the financial constraints too that
that all organizations have, How do you make
sure that you're using your resources in the
best way possible to stay ahead of the
curve and, you know, through partnerships as well
as I can imagine growing internal skill sets
and knowledge basis.
Absolutely. It takes everyone at Up c to
help protect
our organization from cybersecurity threats.
Because typically,
we people are are the weakest link where
we click on a link or we respond
to an email and and it creates and
exposure that we have to deal with. So
focusing on that, keeping
cybersecurity
front of mind,
in an already busy mine when our nurses
and doctors and again text or taking care
of patients,
I can't speak
enough about the dedication they
demonstrate and being persistent in helping protect Up.
That's number 1.
On our technology team, you're absolutely right. We
have to continually
enable our teams,
especially on the cybersecurity team that we have
here at Up c to develop and grow
and into keep ups scaling
their abilities and capabilities and working at the
top of their licensure. Right? We continually try
to pursue different ways to automate
our identification of vulnerabilities and threats
in that remediation or recovery of that. So
our tel folks, which we don't have an
unlimited set of resources here to help defend
Up and protect it from cyber street threats,
but that we're leveraging and aligning those folks
in the right areas to best protect the
organization. Again, this is all risk management.
So
it to your point, it changes from day
to day, hour to hour based upon what's
happening out there in in the industry. So
we're always trying to pay attention to what
0 day threats are occurring,
not just in healthcare but beyond,
and looking at our own inventory of technologies
that we have deployed and making sure that
we're staying up to date with the patches
and fixes and things like that I refer
to as good It high team.
If you don't do that well, you're really
putting your organization in a bad position to
combat against
all the
criminals that are out there that are trying
to be disruptive to the healthcare industry and
beyond.
That's that's a great point. And thank you
so much for 0 in there just 1
bit. Now,
when you do look ahead, what are you
most excited about and what makes you nervous?
The excitement piece, as... All the buzz of
is around us around Ai
and generative of Ai and different new technologies.
So 1 thing that I'm directly involved with
and in partnership with Doctor. Rob Part our
C Ut ce is leading our
implementation of a brand new instance of Epic?
Why is that important why is that exciting
for us at Up c? Well, we've been
managing
and running 9 different electronic health records over
a number of years through acquisitions
and quite honestly just our growth that we've
outgrown a lot of these.
So we're at this point where
we have a great opportunity to transform how
we deliver care
The number 1, impact the quality outcomes for
our patients and number 2, create some efficiencies
for
our nurses and doctors and text that are
providing that care. But we're on this journey
and partnership with Epic and we're early on
in our configuration phase and have
scores of work groups working
together, not just It, but operations and our
clinical experts
that are participating in defining how we're going
to
define how Up C delivers that care across
all of our hospitals, all of our physician
practices and clinics and
and everywhere. So
we can really create this solid foundation to
do even more great things with technology and
innovation.
That that that came to light for us,
this opportunity during Covid when we were trying
to be nimble and adapt to the different
changing environment,
anytime we wanted to make a change, you
had to go do it across 9 different
systems and not everyone was alike in
implementation. So you have this variation, which is
from my perspective, not a good thing when
you're trying to support these different environments and
there's different users and trying to train them.
So we just see just such a tremendous
opportunity for us at Up
to transform the delivery of care for our
system.
What makes me nervous
to answer the second part of your question,
that's a tough question. I don't know if
things really
make me nervous because I think
If you plan well,
if you communicate well and if you engage
the right subject matter experts
and
and team members
and you work together,
I think we can accomplish anything.
But I'm not trying to skirt your question
there, but
I would just say,
again, not maybe not having as big of
an impact as we might think we will
have.
I guess that you can consider that to
make me a little nervous, but I honestly
in reality don't feel nervous at all.
So
for us was a great place to be
and certainly, you know, a really productive way
to operate from that mindset as just always
being able to accomplish what you set out
to do and Of course, I can imagine
there are times. And as you said, things
don't work out exactly the way you want
them to or or had envisioned. But
you know, can can still work towards that
goal. And I think that project of of
bringing all, hospitals that single instance of ethic.
I I know that's a huge, huge undertaking,
system wide. And so You know, you you
look at your progress
in, you know, measuring that, and I I
know investment of high, effort energy and financial
resources.
I guess, from just, like, looking at that
time period, is there any lessons that you
learned that you could share with others who
maybe going through something similar or or find
to get ready to have a similar,
integration and and bringing some of the... Their
acquired hospitals onto Epic or another Ehr platform.
Know, what do you really see as being
important for for those
organizations to know going in and systems to
set up so that dan gonna be as
seamless as possible?
Yes, a great question and biggest lesson learned,
I think we would all agree as we
on this journey at Up c is that
this is not an It project.
This is a transformational project from a clinical
and operational perspective and So having that engagement,
we have tremendous clinical and operational leaders at
Up that have been
around for a long time. We have lot
of great new leaders as well.
But having that engagement that we're all in
this together and it's not It doing this
unto
them,
but us doing this and and
walking this journey together is probably the biggest
thing that I would
give a feedback and as a best practice
If you don't have that engagement,
if you don't have that commitment, and you'll
have that ownership from the clinical and operational
side, you're gonna have failure.
You're going to have delays. You're going to
have
your end user community, the
not as receptive to the change,
if they're not part of that change.
So that's probably the biggest piece, And that's
honestly
the the phase that we're at right now
in these work groups seeing that sort of
Symphony happened
you know, making Beautifully music of defining here's
our our new way that we're going to
deliver care utilizing this platform
and and making it standard is great.
Now there's going to be challenges head obviously
to make sure that we're able to train
upwards of 90000
users
over a couple phases of our project
provide the right support. So as they transition
from the old way to their new way
that we're effective and efficient in doing that.
And again, it's not just going from 1
system to
a new system. We're going from 9 different
systems to 1. So there's different training for
different people.
That's really fascinating. And certainly, you know, as
I said, a huge undertaking. So definitely
excited for your team to be able to
realize all the benefits of being that single
instance of Ehr. Now,
before we wrap up here, I'm wondering what
are will the most
effective healthcare leaders need in order to be
successful over the next 2 to 3 years
or so.
Another great question.
I'm a big believer in
creating a vision
and having a plan being able to effectively
communicate that plan to get the buying and
support to implement the changes that
you need for your organization.
I think that's so key to have that
alignment, have that that strategy
the easily
communicated across an organization.
And that comes from what I've seen and
experienced specialty Up c,
extremely effective
leaders
in our industry.
Without that, you can't be bold, you can't
be successful. You can't be as impactful as
you might hope to be
in these very challenging tons of health.
So
yeah, I think those are those are key
things to
really clearly
communicate
a great vision and get that buy and
support from
all your stakeholders
to
effectively change how your organization evolves and innovate
over the next few years.
Those are those are the leaders are going
to be most successful.
Fantastic. Well Chris, thank you so much for
joining the podcast today. This has been a
really fun and I look forward to connecting
with you again soon.
Thank you for having me Laura and great
talking with you.