In the Becker's Hospital Review 5th Annual Meeting in Chicago, Asher Kramer, national practice director strategic consulting at Leidos Health, an IT consulting company, discussed what CIOs need to do keep their organizations thriving in the current healthcare climate as well as in the future.
"A lot of money has been put into IT, and while most people have done it for regulatory reasons, IT ultimately needs to support the organization's strategic goals," said Mr. Kramer.
According to research conducted by Leidos Health over the last two years or so, organizations are satisfied with IT doing what IT always did — optimizing back end office and business office operations. However, for IT to successfully support the strategic goals of an organization, it needs to move out of the back office and into a partnership with clinicians and patients, said Mr. Kramer, and it is the CIO's responsibility to ensure this is achieved.
Here are five things that a healthcare organization needs from a CIO:
1. An IT governance structure, which is flexible, sustainable and scalable as well as system processes that are integrated and user-friendly.
2. IT governance processes that achieve core clinical integration across the continuum of care.
3. Systems that support continuous process redesign and improvement.
4. Systems that promote alignment, accessibility and communication.
5. An integrated IT team.
Where there seems to be chaos in an IT department, CIOs need to take a step back and make changes to put an effective IT governance process in place that supports strategic organizational goals. According to Mr. Kramer, CIOs can achieve this by:
• Developing multi-year plans
• Prioritizing IT projects
• Creating strategies that connect projects to organizational goals and metrics
• Measuring IT successes and return on investment