Aaron Miri, CIO, Dell Medical School & UT Health Austin, Chapter 3

One of the most common pieces of advice offered by those in leadership positions is to take risks. Get out of your comfort zone. It’s solid guidance, and for the most part, isn’t difficult to follow — unless, of course, you’ve been on the losing end of a big gamble. In 2015, Aaron Miri accepted a leadership role with an organization that aimed to make patient care a luxury experience. But after just a few years, Walnut Hill Medical Center closed its doors due to financial troubles. For most, the experience would be enough to scare them away from risky moves.

Fortunately, Aaron Miri isn’t most people. Last summer, he assumed the CIO role at Dell Medical School at UT Health Austin, a cutting-edge organization that places a high value on value-based care, innovation, and using social determinants to improve care. For Miri, the opportunity to return to his home state of Texas and work alongside some of the brightest people in the industry was too good to pass up.

In this interview, he talks about why he was willing to take another leap of faith, why he’s a strong believer in ‘open-door leadership,’ and the importance of building a solid professional network.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3



* Reflecting on Walnut Hill’s closing – “There are positive lessons in everything I’ve done.”

* Stepping out of the comfort zone

* “Elasticity is the key to success.”

* Value of a solid network

* “You have to go through trials and tribulations.”

* Comparing leadership to parenthood

* Advocacy – “It’s something you have to make time for.”

* Learning from Pamela McNutt



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Bold Statements

I understand what it takes to build something from scratch. I understand the ‘roll up your sleeves and get it done’ mentality where you’re not just a CIO who speaks from a stage and is able to articulate something; you’re a CIO who can actually develop a working product.

I’m going to learn and I’m going to lean on my network, and lean on my peers, and lean on folks I can trust to fill in the gaps and teach me what I don’t know. And it’s okay to not know everything. If you can do that, you can be successful with anything. That elasticity is the key to success.

A lot of these world-class institutions are just beginning to dip their toe in the water. We’re all in on it — the good, bad, and ugly — and we’re sharing that at a federal level with great partners that are willing to learn, listen, take notes, help maybe articulate policy that helps deal with the deficiency. That’s been priceless.

If you don’t help at the rule-making, law-making, policy-making level, you’re leaving a key thing out of the entire mix, which is teaching the next generation how to get things to goal.

Gamble:  You’ve had experience being with new organizations, and I imagine there’s always lessons learned — for example, with Walnut Hill Medical Center. What were able to take from that experience?

Miri:  Absolutely. Starting a brand-new hospital in Dallas from scratch with phenomenal world-class physicians was a dream shop, but it wasn’t tethered to an academic R1 university, and it didn’t have that infrastructure behind it to help propel it. But the Walnut Hill healthcare team was amazing — they now operate at a couple of major facilities in Dallas. They’re doing well. That team was going to be successful no matter what it did. And I’m proud of them.