Becker's Hospital Review

71 PRACTICE MANAGEMENT THOUGHT LEADERSHIP How Beaumont Health reduced its IT budget after a hospital merger: Q&A with CIO Subra Sripada By Jackie Drees S ubra Sripada brings years of health IT leadership experience to his role as executive vice pres- ident and CIO of Southfield, Mich.- based Beaumont Health. Mr. Sripada previously served as CIO and chief administrative offi- cer at Beaumont Health System, Beaumont Health's previous orga- nization before merging with Oak- wood Healthcare in Dearborn, Mich., and Farmington Hills, Mich.-based Botsford Health Care in 2014. Prior to joining Beaumont in 2008, Mr. Sripada gained business strategy experience after serving in a leadership role with PricewaterhouseCoopers, a global management consulting firm. In the position, Mr. Sripada consulted on health IT and business strategy in the U.S. and internation- ally. He is also a member of the College of Health Informa- tion Management Executives. Mr. Sripada earned his Bachelor of Science degree in mechan- ical engineering from Osmania University in Hyderabad, India, and his master's degree in industrial and systems engineering from Manhattan-based Kansas State University. Here, he discusses how he allocates Beaumont Health's IT budget and the artificial intelligence project he's excited to explore in 2019. Editor's note: Responses were lightly edited for clarity and length. Question: What does your health IT budget look like this year? Is it trending up or down over previous years? Subra Sripada: As part of our merger, we consolidated our core systems and rationalized the application portfolio along with eliminating duplicative infrastructure. This re- sulted in reductions to our budget. Now that most of these efforts are behind us, our budget is at a reduced run rate. While the overall spend has flatlined, we budget synergies each year with which we accommodate year-over-year cost increases to the IT budget. Q: How are you allocating the budget? What difference is there this year compared to previous years? SS: We made significant investments in consolidating our core systems in the past three years, along with cybersecu- rity. While we still have some consolidation activity under- way, our investments are focused on those components that drive enhancements to our care model and help us on our journey of being the best at delivering patient and family-centered care. Q: What projects are you most excited about for 2019? SS: In 2018, we worked with an AI and machine learning startup company to automate discovery of savings oppor- tunities in drug use. The pilot was successful beyond our expectations, and we are now gearing up for a full-scale deployment. Piloting the use of this AI/ML platform to our population health efforts for more effective pattern recog- nition, and thereby effective care management, is an excit- ing prospect we will be exploring in 2019. Additionally, we launched a unified communications tool at our second largest hospital in 2018. The goal was to enable more real-time communications and collaboration among care teams. Our solution offers patient information, patient alarms, central telemetry monitoring unit alerts and texting and voice capabilities through shared smart- phones. We have also adopted the use of [bring your own devic- es] for communication devices that caregivers use. Nurses also use these devices for selective documentation along with using the phones as scanners for bar code medication administration. I am excited to roll this out to the rest of our hospitals in 2019. n a unified team. e work of organizations like the American Nurses Association, the American Medical Women's Association and others serves as the foundation for our efforts and makes our work possible. Q: I know the organization is also partnering with FIGS, the medical scrubs manufacturer, to bring the Time's Up message to hospitals and health systems. EC: FIGS was really wonderful. ey had this great idea to create scrubs with the Time's Up logo and in the organization's signature black color. It is such a good, symbolic representation of what we want people to feel from the organization. Providers can carry that message with them so that even if they have these experiences at the bedside, there is this notion that there is someone out there trying to change their environment. It's that wonderful opportunity for us. Q: What are some concrete goals for Time's Up Healthcare? EC: We want every health system and health professional school to come to the table and declare their commitment to the goals of Time's Up Healthcare. We have the opportunity to put forward and share our best practices for the workplace so those hospitals and health systems can improve the policies they have in place to make providers and other healthcare professionals feel safer and more accessible, and frankly al- low us to give better care to our patients. Our organization officially launched a few days ago, so when we initial- ly spoke to people, they were understandably hesitant and suspicious about getting involved. But we're working with people in every type of role and encourage anyone who wants to work with us to join. We are really trying to address every single corner of healthcare, not just the stories of doctors or nurses. n

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