Throughout her 5 years at CIO of Johnson Metropolis, Tennessee-based Ballad Well being, Pam Austin has helped architect a system-wide digital transformation targeted on streamlining know-how, bettering clinician workflows and increasing entry to care throughout the group’s largely rural footprint.
One of the crucial impactful tasks Austin has led is the standardization of Ballad’s know-how infrastructure throughout its 20 hospitals — half of which serve rural communities — by consolidating techniques and transitioning to a single, unified Epic platform.
The main focus of this effort has been on lowering redundant functions and boosting usability for clinicians, she stated. Austin identified that usability is an important a part of digital transformation.
“We work carefully with our frontline workforce members in medical areas to know their workflows and what their ache factors are. We speak to them about their use of the EMR and what a greater expertise ought to appear like, as a result of usability is crucial — if a software provides extra clicks or complexity, it’s not going to final,” she acknowledged.
She thinks most instruments ought to merely “fade into the background” — that means they work behind the scenes to allow extra face time between sufferers and suppliers. The final word aim is to make sure that know-how helps, slightly than complicates, care supply, particularly within the rural communities Ballad serves.
In rural areas, the most important barrier isn’t know-how —it’s change administration, Austin famous.
“In rural communities, you’ll see sufferers typically have longstanding, trusted relationships with their suppliers straight. After which we introduce digital care fashions like telehealth — in order that must be accomplished with care, not disruption. Now we have to take a affected person=first method. We give attention to intuitive instruments and supplier steering. Now we have the supplier work straight with their affected person to allow them to construct that belief with a well-known clinician. That supplier walks the affected person via the brand new course of and easy methods to undertake that know-how, then the adoption occurs quicker,” she defined.
She additionally famous that every one IT initiatives at Ballad begin by addressing a transparent medical and/or operational want — the well being system doesn’t simply implement tech for tech’s sake.
In Austin’s view, CIOs need to be extra strategic than ever.
“We have to be ahead considering — what know-how is coming down the pipe and getting ready our group accordingly. After which we embed analysts and managers and administrators in every of the operational areas — so we perceive what’s occurring in income cycle, within the pharmacy, within the lab, in radiology, in nursing, and with our suppliers, each on the ambulatory and acute aspect. Now we have to really perceive how the know-how is impacting the operations of your entire group,” she remarked.
Her work underscores how healthcare CIOs are not simply IT leaders — however now key drivers of tradition, care high quality and organizational cohesion.
Supply: metamorworks, Getty Photos
