Becker's Hospital Review

40 CIO / HEALTH IT How health system CIOs balance remote and hybrid work By Naomi Diaz T he COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the adoption of remote and hybrid work in health systems, especially within IT teams. Healthcare organizations expect this trend to continue due to the flexibility it offers employees. "Munson Healthcare has embraced remote and hybrid work models for select IT roles, capitalizing on this flexibility as a strategic advantage for attracting and retaining talent throughout the state of Michigan and nationwide," Michael Saad, CIO of Traverse City, Mich.-based Munson Healthcare told Becker's. "is approach has been instrumental in filling pivotal IT leadership and technical roles." Mr. Saad emphasized that providing remote and hybrid work options for IT staff has emerged as a significant benefit for employees. is flexibility not only enhances productivity but also plays a crucial role in retaining skilled talent within the organization, he said. At Baton Rouge, La.-based Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System, 60% of the team works fully remote, 15% hybrid and 25% onsite. "While there are many advantages and some disadvantages of the remote/hybrid model, we have not seen a material impact on the speed of implementing IT projects," Will Landry, CIO of the health system, told Becker's. As a result, Mr. Landry expects to maintain this configuration for the IT team. "At this time, the advantages outweigh the disadvantages," he said. "We are committed to focusing on more interdisciplinary rounding and spending more time at the elbow with our clinicians." Meanwhile, Los Angeles-based Cedars-Sinai leans heavily on a hybrid approach. At the health system, 10% of its team operates fully remote, 20% of IT staff are on site while the remaining 70% work in a hybrid model. "Our hybrid team members reside locally and come into the office based on business requirements and customer needs. is flexibility has proven invaluable, particularly during critical events," Craig Kwiatkowski, PharmD, CIO at Cedars-Sinai told Becker's. In particular, Dr. Kwiatkowski said during the nationwide Crowdstrike IT outage, hybrid team members came together to address urgent issues on-site for several days, ensuring a prompt and effective response. "Such instances highlight the importance of having a critical mass of local team members who can transition seamlessly between remote and in-person work, depending on the demands of the moment," he said. Additionally, the hybrid IT teams have remained as productive as Why CIOs can't be the 'senator from IT' anymore By Laura Dyrda H ealth system CIOs spent years as the technically proficient expert tasked with EHR roll outs, cybersecurity and IT tickets. That's no longer enough. "All of us as CIOs need to act like we are executives first and technology people second," said Daniel Barchi, CIO of Chicago-based CommonSpirit Health, during the Becker's Health IT + Digital Health + Revenue Cycle Conference in early October. "If we show up as the 'senator from technology,' we're going to be granted a little bit of time, but then every time they look at us, they're going to think we're a router speaking and not really a leader in the organization." The requests and insights from CIOs focused primarily on technology are easy to brush off as self-serving; other C-suite members will think their ideas and budget requests only benefit IT. But the executive-focused CIO can dispel that notion with hard numbers showing the financial benefits of their request. "As long as we keep in mind that we have a mission, especially for a Catholic faith-based organization, we have a mission that's about the patient first and then we have a duty to make sure we've got good revenue coming in," said Mr. Barchi. "That's true for all health systems, and then what we do as HR or finance or IT or clinical or operations facilities, that all supports the first two." All executive leaders should work together to create a vision and paint the picture of what that looks like to their teams to gain buy-in. Every team member should feel tied to the larger vision and understand how their work impacts system goals. Michael Restuccia, senior vice president and CIO of Penn Medicine, takes a similar view of his role within the broader C-suite. "We've taken the energy every two years to look at our project management office and the big projects we've completed, and those projects in particular that have financial benefit because again, that's how the CFO speaks, and we call that our benefits realization summary," said Mr. Restuccia. "We put it in a nice packet, about 30 to 40 different projects we summarize, and it literally shows how we enable millions, if not hundreds of millions of dollars worth of benefit to the organization. If you can show that, then you might get a little bit more." n

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