Aaron Miri, CIO, Walnut Hill Medical Center, Chapter 1

When Walnut Hill Medical Center opened its doors in April of 2014, Forbes magazine called it “The hospital Steve Jobs would have built” — not because it was built from the ground-up to support cutting-edge technology, but because Walnut Hill is “founded on the premise that the patient is first,” a mantra that is evident in everything from the “15-5” rule to the design of the rooms. For Aaron Miri, the opportunity to serve as an enabler in improving patient care was too good to pass up. In this interview, he talks about what he’s learned from his mentors, his strategy to incorporate wearable technologies into everyday practice, and the challenge Walnut Hill faces of how to grow meaningfully without losing its core values.

Chapter 1



* About Walnut Hill — “The hospital Steve Jobs would have built.”

* Being a physician-managed hospital

* 5 & 15 rule

* C-suit execs wearing “the hat of patient advocate”

* Physician engagement & buy-in

* Soarian clinicals & financials — “We’re basically a paperless environment.”

* Finding the “sweet spot” with wearables



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Bold Statements

It’s about the culture. It’s about the people. And yes, the technology here is state-of-the-art, but it’s not about tech. Tech is an enabler. And as a CIO, my job is to enable again the culture and that patient-centered care through all the tools available to our caregivers.

Walnut Hill didn’t just want a CIO. What they were recruiting was somebody that, yes, understood the technology and understood what IT is in healthcare, but also understood where the patient and, again, the human experience plays into that.

I get to step out of my technology comfort zone and get into aspects and dimensions that sometimes CIOs can’t often find themselves in very easily. And for me, that’s fun. I get to put on a different hat, think of it from a business perspective and generate ROI beyond helping to achieve Meaningful Use, because now we have meaningful experience.

I’m side by side making these decisions with clinicians and saying, ‘here’s how your patients are going to benefit,’ and they’re like, ‘Great! I agree with that. This is what we can do.’ Or better yet, they provide feedback and say, ‘have you thought about this?’ So then I become a collaborator and I become an integrator.

I don’t expect a clinician to be a great technologist. I expect the clinician to be a good clinician, and it’s your job as a technologist to sit down with them, to understand their world, to partner with them side-by-side and be a collaborator at figuring out what I can and can’t do, and work through it. That’s the role of a CIO. It’s not to shove technology down someone’s throat.

Gamble:  Hi Aaron, thank you so much for taking some time to speak with us today.

Miri:  Thank you for the opportunity.

Gamble:  I wanted to get some information about Walnut Hill Medical Center, first in terms of bed size, but then a little bit of history about the organization.

Miri:  Absolutely, happy to help. When we talk about bed size, we were founded on the premise that the patient is first, and that from patient care delivery to technology to processes, procedures and even the people that we select to come to Walnut Hill, it’s about patient-centered care.

Walnut Hill opened its doors in April 2014, and immediately Forbes Magazine coined it the hospital Steve Jobs would have built. It’s a 100-bed organization. We do every specialty under the sun except for deliver babies at this time. Our physicians are world renowned. It is amazing the experience that the patient has from the minute they walk into our front doors and are greeted by our valet, all the way through discharge and follow ups and so forth. Again,