Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/1293445
168 168 THOUGHT LEADERSHIP Stanford Health Care's IT strategy through the pandemic: CIO Eric Yablonka on capital spend, culture and new concerns By Laura Dyrda S tanford (Calif.) Health Care is in the heart of Silicon Val- ley and known for innovative partnerships with big technology companies as well as entrepreneur- ial companies to improve clinical care, research and innovation. at mindset hasn't changed during the pandemic, says CIO Eric Yablonka, but now the sys- tem is doubling down on targeted efforts to manage the budget while focusing on what patients and staff need today. Here, Mr. Yablonka discusses how Stanford Health Care is navigating the pandemic and optimizing opportunities. Editor's Note: Responses have been edited for clarity and length. Question: What are the biggest challenges you're facing today and how are they different from the challenges you faced when the pandemic hit? Eric Yablonka: We dropped almost everything when the pandemic hit and took an all-hands-on-deck approach to supporting the health system with technology and digital solutions. Most of our team had already relocated to an off-site location and the majority quickly tran- sitioned to working fully remotely. Even before the pandemic, we had a mixed model of telecommuting and onsite staffing. We also employ people from around the country who were already working remotely. Everyone else — other than our biomedical teams and field services teams who needed to be at the facilities — worked from home. We are continuing that offsite work model for most everyone on the IT team, but also beginning to consider what the "new normal" will look like. Our IT group has an initiative to assess future work models, which includes a cross-functional IT group partnering with the HR department to understand how we can maintain our strong and pos- itive culture and identity while working remotely. We want to ensure that our staff feels engaged and connected even when they are not working in the same location. We're also assessing our support mod- els for remote work, as well as our virtual capabilities to understand where we may need additional technologies. We are very proud of our team and how supportive everyone is of each other. Q: How has telehealth changed for Stanford Medicine? EY: At the height of the pandemic we were conducting well over 60% of our ambulatory visits virtually. As we've safely reopened, we are now steadily seeing about 41% virtual visits. We've taken every neces- sary step to ensure the safety of patients who require in-person visits, and continue to make virtual visits readily available when appropriate. Q: Many health systems are operating on tighter budgets than anticipated at the beginning of the year during the pandemic. How are you thinking about your budget dif- ferently now than you did eight months ago? EY: Managing resources to address revenue shortfalls is a challenge for every health care system during the pandemic. At Stanford Health Care, we've adjusted our IT plans, re-assessed our projects and iden- tified the ones we will continue to invest in. We leveraged our IT gov- ernance and portfolio management process during that analysis, and deferred some work that did not rise to our new criteria because of the necessary investment or our new focus on recovering from the initial wave of COVID-19. We are now hardening the capabilities we did pursue and scaling them as needed. A few examples of the projects we are still working on include tele- health, virtual work, contactless check-ins and the mobile health plat- form with 700,000 subscribers. Our team is also refining and scaling Stanford Health Care's Occupational Health services and testing ca- pacity; Stanford Health Care provides evaluation and testing for our staff and processes those tests at our own virology laboratory. e lab- oratory also supports testing for many other organizations. Our top priorities over the past six months have been responding to COVID-19, reopening the organization, providing the safest, highest quality care to patients, and keeping our staff safe and healthy. We have been fortunate in Northern California not to have the same ex- periences with COVID-19 that they did in Florida, New York and Texas, but we are watching and working every day to make sure we are prepared and meet those challenges if they arise. Q: What projects are still worth investing in? What can be put on hold for the moment? EY: We are reducing capital spending to be mindful of our limited resources. We are pursuing implementation of a new human capital management platform and continuing to invest in multiple projects that are close to fruition. People costs are the No. 1 costs to the or- ganization and having better insight and better staff engagement and analytics will position us to manage costs in a more insightful way. We did defer some important system implementations, but largely the deferments are projects that are not absolutely mission-critical. We are very focused now on investments that are necessary for our recovery from necessary measures we took to prepare for a possible surge in COVID-19 cases, such as postponing all elective surger- ies. For example, we are boosting our video visit capabilities, virtu- al health work, contactless health check-ins, mobile health platform (which now has 700,000 subscribers) and Occupational Health Ser- vices and testing capacity, as noted above. We as a leadership team worked through which projects to defer together. IT was focusing in a collaborative way to align on our priorities. We have not cut anything critical to addressing or responding to the pandemic or safely reopening the organization, which is our highest priority. Q: What partnerships have been most critical over the past six months?