In this special Speaker Series, Becker's Healthcare caught up with Steven Sarros, vice president and CIO of Baptist Health Care in Pensacola, Fla.
Mr. Sarros will speak on a panel during the Becker's Hospital Review 4th Annual Health IT + Revenue Cycle Conference titled "Mobile Health and Digital Transformation: The Best Ideas Today," at 1:15 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 20. Learn more about the event and register to attend in Chicago.
Question: What is the No. 1 thing you wish you knew before taking a leadership post at your organization?
Steven Sarros: I have joined two organizations as part of their executive leadership teams. The most important thing to know about an organization is the people. Knowing who they are, where they came from, how they understand the organization and, at a base level, their names and the names of their key leaders. I have witnessed this myself, how impactful it is when people know your name — when senior leaders take the time to learn about who is in the room and how everyone fits into building the team and collaborating at a very high level. Recognition is very important and it starts with connecting names to faces and faces to roles in the organization
Q: What is the most exciting thing happening in health IT right now? And what is the most overrated health IT trend?
SS: The common term is Internet of Things. In healthcare, the biggest change is not so much the consumer devices that are taking blood pressures, blood sugars, activity and other personal health measures. The biggest change is how our devices supporting the direct care of our patients are now online in our EMR's. The industry was stuck for quite a while with simple digital acquisition servers that connected just the most advanced clinical monitors. Today, our patients are cared for with monitors, tests and pictures that go directly into the medical record. An example is that instead of working with seven data elements from our respirators, we now can share 27 elements from the machine directly into the medical record. These are all elements chosen by our respiratory therapists to help them deliver and document better care.
Q: What's the biggest misconception about health IT?
SS: We hear all the time about how far behind health IT is compared to other industries. We hear that nurses and doctors do not like technology. In my experience, both of these are not true. Acknowledging the complexity of healthcare delivery first can set up a better conversation around building and improving systems. Moving the patient through our system — from the doctor's office, to the specialist consultation, to the diagnostic testing, to the pre-procedure consultation, to the procedure and then back to post-procedure care — is far more specialized and complex than moving 360 automobiles of the same make and model down a production line, predictably, each shift.