Becker's Hospital Review

54 CIO / HEALTH IT Why every CIO needs to know how to partner: Lehigh Valley Health Network CIO Michael Minear By Mackenzie Garrity S ince being appointed CIO of Allen- town, Pa.-based Lehigh Valley Health Network in 2015, Michael Minear has spearheaded the implementation and optimi- zation of an Epic EHR. With nearly 40 years of experience in the healthcare industry, Mr. Minear knows how fast healthcare moves. He also understands how challenging it can be to change norms. Below, Mr. Minear discusses how consumer- ism has changed healthcare as well as the is- sues with the increase in technology options. Editor's note: Responses have been light edited for clarity and length. Question: If you could solve one health IT challenge/headache over- night, what would it be and why? Michael Minear: We are facing so much change in healthcare from the rise of val- ue-based purchasing to pressures to improve quality. At the same time, we have a lot of technology options at our disposal. In our case, we are fully deployed with Epic. We have a lot of claims management tools with Optum. e challenge then is how do we take this huge amount of need and requirement for change with all the technology options we have to create a strategy. We know directional- ly what we need to focus on; however, it's most oen complicated by other plans. Healthcare organizations need to develop strategies that the entire organization can get behind. Q: How has the rise in consumerism changed the way you look at health- care? MM: e biggest thing that has impacted the way we are managing and visioning tech- nology is how we connect with consumers, or patients. As an example, we have around 300,000 patients that use the Epic patient portal MyChart. We then get about 450 calls a week from patients asking for technical sup- port. Another way to think about that is we have around 18,000 employees in our orga- nization, but we are supporting 300,000 pa- tients with this technology. We've done a lot with MyChart and expanded remote patient monitoring program to con- nect with patients and allow patients to con- nect with us. ere are so many touchpoints with patients and technology. We target pa- tients with consumer testing devices. Currently, we monitor around 500 patients. We are doing this because the clinical and financial risk for us is so great with readmis- sion penalties and clinical outcomes. For the program, we identify through our data ana- lytics a cohort of patients who need critical attention. We actively identify patients for the program at the hospital with the goal of hav- ing the patients monitored from their homes immediately aer leaving the hospital. Q: What is one health IT fad you want to leave behind in 2019? MM: I've been trying to leave behind niche software for the past 20 years. We've made a huge investment in an EHR software suite. We have other software suites, and we are still constantly inundated with vendors. These vendors are marketing a piece of niche software that does a very specific thing and can't interoperate with other systems. I thought this would die down over the years, but it seems to have accelerated. For example, I have a lot of people that come back from conferences saying we have to in- corporate artificial intelligence. I ask them why we need the technology. And typically, the same people don't have a response. We call these things "bright shiny objects." With AI specifically, we can do a lot of the same machine learning and analysis through Epic. It's better to do it through our core system. Q: What is one thing every CIO needs in his/her playbook? MM: I have to say, knowing how to partner is extremely important. Healthcare leaders don't do anything of value unless we create a fundamental partnership. Some of this partnership is within the IT group. Every key project needs partners, including clinicians, operations partners and financial players. If you are trying to do things without a coali- tion or broad partnership, you won't have a big impact. n Ohio hospital hit with 2-notch credit downgrade amid IT transition By Ayla Ellison M oody's Investors Service downgraded Lancaster, Ohio-based Fairfield Medical Center's revenue bond rating to "Ba2" from "Baa3." The rat- ing outlook is negative. Moody's said the two-notch downgrade reflects risks that the hospital will face as it transitions to a new IT system. "While FMC will likely see improved operating results following a very weak fiscal 2018, recovery will be slower than anticipated, in part hampered by weak volume trends attributed to both the IT project as well as the loss of a key phy- sician for a period of time during 2019," Moody's said. The 222-bed hospital has seen liquidity metrics decline due to IT billing and collection issues, but management expects these metrics to improve as collec- tion matters are resolved. The negative outlook also reflects Moody's belief that the hospital will face challenges as it completes the transition to its new clinical and billing IT system. "This will contribute to protracted weakness in margins and cash metrics and, along with rising debt levels and small size, will result in higher uncertainty," Moody's said. n

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