Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/1047089
53 CIO / HEALTH IT Leadership responsibilities of a CMIO & improving patient care: Q&A with CMIO Dr. Sarah Kramer By Jackie Drees S arah Kramer, MD, chief medical information officer at Yuma (Ariz.) Regional Medical Center, discussed the importance of building relationships with physicians and hearing their opin- ions on how to improve patient care with Becker's Hospital Review. Editor's Note: Responses are lightly edited for clarity and length. Question: Can you share your best advice for motivating your teams? Dr. Sarah Kramer: e most sustainable technique is to continuous- ly relate the work of our analysts to improving patient care and the caregiver experience. A useful analogy is to think of our roles as being what stagecra is to theater, where our job is to manage the environ- ment and allow the actors to perform their best, hopefully thrilling the audience with the production value. Q: How does your organization gain physician buy-in when it is implementing a new technology or solution? SK: at is a great question. In my current role, most of our physicians are highly independent. Even those that share a practice have strong beliefs about how they want to practice medicine. ere is no substi- tute for high-touch and proactive customer service, so I try to get out and among them, to build continuous relationships and make sure I'm hearing directly from them what's working well for them, and where improvements are needed. For example, we are rolling out electronic prescribing of controlled substances, so I've been going to many depart- ment meetings and also having lots of direct conversations with our physicians. Q: What is the No. 1 thing you wish you knew before taking a leadership post at your organization? SK: ere is no substitute for understanding all the hidden relationships that exist in an organization that you've recently joined. Even if you have been with an organization for a while, becoming a leader exposes rela- tionships and connections that were not visible before. It takes time to find these tacit connections and channels of communication. Q: In the past 12 months, how have you adapted to new patient experience expectations in the age of consumerism? SK: I'm not sure that consumer expectations have changed much in just the past year. What seems to be changing is physician acceptance that patient experience is not optional. Many of our physician leaders are stepping up and evangelizing among their peers. I partner with these clinical leaders to show how technology can help us be competitive with our patients and make them want to stay in our health system. n IBM says its new services 'open the black box of AI' By Jessica Kim Cohen I BM launched a new service to give businesses transparency into how artificial intelligence makes decisions, in a move the com- pany says is a "major step in breaking open the black box of AI." The software service, which runs on the IBM Cloud, helps busi- nesses manage AI models from IBM along with those built on frameworks from its competitors — such as Amazon and Microsoft — by explaining how AI makes decisions as the algorithms run. Displayed on a visual dashboard, the service outlines which fac- tors swayed an AI's decision in one direction versus another, the model's confidence in the recommendation, and suggested data to add to help mitigate any bias that the service detects. IBM Research also plans to release a set of algorithms and codes related to AI bias detection and mitigation, dubbed the AI Fairness 360 tool kit, to the open-source community. IBM's goal for the re- lease is to encourage researchers to integrate bias detection as they build AI models. "It's time to translate principles into practice," Beth Smith, general manager of Watson AI at IBM, said in a news release. "We are giving new transparency and control to the businesses who use AI and face the most potential risk from any flawed decision making." n Colorado regional hospital to save $5M on Epic EHR after affiliating with larger system By Julie Spitzer M emorial Regional Health in Craig, Colo., will use a newly announced affiliation with Grand Junction, Colo.-based SCL Health St. Mary's Regional Health System to invest in a new Epic EHR, a deal expected to save the hospital about $5 million over the next five years, Craig Press reported. The Memorial Regional Health Board of Trustees OK'd the affiliation with SCL Health and the Epic implemen- tation Sept. 20. The affiliation will enable Memorial Regional Health to remain independently managed as well as leverage the buying power of the larger health system. SCL Health, headquartered in Broomfield, Colo., will facilitate Me- morial's switch to Epic. Memorial Regional Health is a full-service community healthcare system that includes specialty, obstetrics and gynecology, orthopedic clinics, a hospital and a re- habilitation center. n