After Jefferson Health merged with Lehigh Valley Health System in August of last year, CIO Luis Taveras, PhD, led the organization through an IT integration in four months while also moving forward with Jefferson's EHR migration to the Cloud and installing WorkDay enterprisewide.
How did he do it?
"Our IT team, which is a very large IT team, has really become one unique team that's working together," he said. "There's no more 'us and them'; that doesn't exist anymore. There's no more differences. We're all one team, not just from the leadership perspective, but from the top to the bottom of the organization. We are working as one cohesive unit and that's a big accomplishment."
In the first three months together, Dr. Taveras established a strategic plan for the IT organization and leaders from both legacy systems are focused on building that vision. Now, he is focused on the future as well.
"For the next five years, we are going to go from this still reactive organization that we are today because we're reacting to a lot of different things, to one that is much more focused on operational excellence and becoming a high performance organization," said Dr. Taveras. "That's the vision and we know exactly what we need to do to get from one step to another. That's helped us have a common view and work together."
The health system has also been migrating Epic to the Microsoft Cloud, and plans to accomplish that this year.
"A lot of organizations have tried that, but they have had to go back to their old environment. We have not, and we don't plan to go back," said Dr. Taveras. "It's working very well for us."
Dr. Taveras is a big believer of in-person interactions to instill trust and create the "one culture" he's looking for. He is continuing to focus on integrating the IT team and enabling the rest of the organization to complete the integration process as well.
"Yes, we can accomplish a lot through the screen. No question about it. COVID taught us that, but we can do so much more when we're meeting with each other as we leave a meeting and walk together, as you run into each other in the hallway," said Dr. Taveras. "Those are big things that we really have to continue to leverage: people working together and building this team together."
His team is now focused on working with the other departments – finance, human resources, supply chain and clinical departments – to integrate into the enterprisewide system. Then, the focus on operational excellence can take center stage.
"We have lots and lots of applications all over the organization," said Dr. Taveras. "We cannot have that many applications and think that we're going to be operationally efficient, so we're going to go through a major rationalization process. I would love to reduce 50% of the applications in the next 12 to 24 months so we can really focus on the best solutions that we can provide for all of our users out there."
Jefferson's other big IT objective for the year is implementing a governance model as part of the IT strategic plan. Dr. Taveras said the team has to be disciplined about its approach to investing in IT solutions and seek guidance from both clinical and business leaders before making a decision.
"I make sure that we're a services organization and that we're here to enable the rest of the organization to do the best they can at what they do, especially when it comes to patient care and driving the right outcomes," he said. "From the top to the bottom, we have agreed that this is the new governance model and now we need to implement it."
Data is playing a big role in the health system's transformation, and Dr. Taveras sees continued improvement as essential to success.
"We need to really refocus on data as being our currency," he said. "We have very much of a dashboard visualization type of organization. We need to turn that around and go back to the basics and say data is what really drives everything that we do. We're going to have a major focus on making sure that we have the right governance model for data, and that the data we produce is trusted by everybody, and that we're using the data to bring the most value to the entire organization."
Jefferson's IT team is in a solid position to realize organizational goals, Dr. Taveras said,and he is focused on reviewing staffing to ensure every person is in the right position to add maximum value.
"In some cases, we may have to retrain folks and make some investments in them to move them into a different role where they can bring the most value," he said. "Where can we put the people that are going to bring the most value to the organization, be the most productive they can be and be happy with their job, because we want people to absolutely be happy and love what they're doing here."