Health system CIOs need to be able to predict and prepare for challenges in a rapidly changing business environment. Joel Vengco, senior vice president and CIO at Hartford Healthcare joined the “Becker’s Healthcare Podcast” to talk about the challenges he faces.
Note: This is an edited excerpt. Listen to the full interview here.
Question: What are some of the top challenges that you are preparing for over the next few years?
Joel Vengco: Right now I think we’re all facing financial challenges. There are numerous factors that are creating these workforce challenges for us. We have a lack of nurses and the ability to get nurses. We end up having to do a lot of agency outreach, and that is expensive reimbursement contraction, the lasting impact of the pandemic, geopolitical issues that are impacting economies, supply chains, inflation and so on. We were anticipating this year of having a banner year in many ways, because the way that Hartford healthcare has really sort of withstood the pandemic and all the different types of things we have built up to this point. And all indicators suggested that, that we were going to do very, very well.
I think we are challenged this year, and I think we are doing better than most, but we are still challenged. I think financially speaking, those are one of the top challenges that we have, especially as we think about growth. As we think about putting into place new digital and data capabilities, you need enough capital to be able to orchestrate that. I think that is going to be a challenge. I think the second challenge is really just about how we get to market faster. Our vision of personalized, coordinated care is achieved by accelerating this data and digital platform and really getting to this on-demand healthcare model.