Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/633033
25 FINANCE HEALTH IT It is the CIO's role to help operational and clinical leaders understand this truth and weigh the costs and benefits of requested customizations. Doing so will promote long-term satisfaction with the system. Simplifying the IT stack to get greater functionality Having a well-defined methodology for reviewing the existing IT stack and proposals for new systems is an essential CIO duty. e process should include clinical, operational and financial leaders. Following the DIME method (Exhibit 2) is one example of a rigorous method- ology that helps an organization simplify and streamline both existing technologies and evaluate new technologies. e CIO should require the staff re- questing new systems or significant in- vestments in existing systems to provide a business case outlining why the technology is important and the expected ROI on the investment. Clarity and transparency about IT requests, including the expected bene- fits, allows senior leaders to prioritize how scarce dollars are allocated to produce the highest organizational value. Once systems are implemented, the CIO's office should lead a rigorous look-back analysis comparing the forecasted ROI with the realized ROI. It is equally important for the CIO to partner with opera- tional, clinical and financial leaders as they work to identify and implement cost savings opportunities. Promoting self-service access to actionable information Getting useful, drillable, actionable data into the hands of decision-makers is the most impactful endeavor a CIO can take on. When end users have to go through gatekeepers of information to get data, the pace of change slows dramatically and oen comes to a complete standstill. Up until recently, these gatekeepers were instrumental because accessing large amounts of data required deep expertise in writing queries and understanding data structures. However, with the intro- duction of more user-friendly decision support systems and presentation layer soware that sits on top of core systems, many end-users can competently access the data they need to make decisions without gatekeeper assistance. Providing access to self-service data sources and analytical tools will make an organization more action-oriented, data-driven and focused on metrics that matter. Overcoming 'integration infatuation' Integration infatuation occurs when recently affiliat- ed organizations make do with substandard or inaccurate information and inefficient processes for their combined entities because they are waiting for the same systems to be adopted throughout. is can take years. In the meantime, manual analyses and unwieldy reports are generated by over-taxed teams. Decision-making and progress on important initiatives stall. e CIO plays a key role in providing a bridge strategy and technologies that enable business leaders to get the information they need — despite the disparate systems — without waiting for years. Technology can pull the same type of data from different systems, normalize it and then make it available for combined reporting and accessible to decision-makers. Major functional areas, such as bill- ing and financial reporting, can be combined easily and the goal of achieving cost savings through affiliating can be realized sooner. Recognizing the need for niche technology Despite huge investments in EHRs, new billing systems and enterprise resource planning systems that promise to fulfill virtu- ally all data and process needs, there are niche technologies that go far beyond the off-the-shelf functionality of large, all-purpose vendors. ese niche technologies provide sizeable ROIs. For ex- ample, there is technology available that sits on top of the core billing system and automates over 50 percent of the tasks that billing staff do on a daily basis — and with greater consistency. ere is also technology available that runs algorithms to find cost savings across an organization and presents these findings in a way clinical and operational people can easily understand and act on, thus minimizing the need for an army of analysts to do math. It is this type of functionality that can truly change the ten- or of an organization. Rather than having people grind through data and invest in automating rote work, staff can focus on work Exhibit 2