Bill Lewkowski, Executive VP & CIO, Metro Health, Chapter 3

Most leaders would like to think their organization is well-positioned for the future. But when your health system had the foresight to bring in futurists more than a decade ago to design a campus around the concept of patient-centric care, there’s no doubt about it. In this interview, Bill Lewkowski discusses the vision his team has and how they’re working to make it a reality, from building a clinical integrated network to viewing analytics as a core strategy. He also talks about the challenge of keeping the team focused during a pending acquisition (which eventually fell through), his plans bold plans with Epic, the cutting-edge work they’ve done with virtualization, and why it all comes down to having the right people.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3



* A culture of innovation

* Staff retention challenges

* Benefits of being small — “We can empower people to use innovation as a driver.”

* At Metro since 1996

* CIOs & project management

* Importance of ownership — “We’re all held empowered and accountable.”

* Work-life balance



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Bold Statements

We have extremely good, creative, innovative, and smart people. They work with vendors to challenge them, to help work with their designers and engineers as to the kind of features and functions that we need to make happen in healthcare, and that has fostered them to not only have this continued focus on innovation and continue to improve that, but also keep them engaged.

We try to use the size to our advantage because if you go work for a very large organization, obviously you’re going to have a very large IT organization and you’re going to have a role that is more specific. You’re going to run into some more bureaucracy and you’re going to run into some limitation.

It’s a given that technology is enabler. It’s just a matter of how do we organize it, how do we prioritize it, how do we manage it, and how do we integrate our operational projects, our workflow, our processes across the delivery of care and tie it all together.

When we picked Epic, it was the clinicians that picked Epic. When we implemented Epic, it was the clinicians that were involved in helping to implement it. We were all held empowered but also accountable for all of this. That’s been a very healthy thing.

It’s not like back in the old days when it seemed like we were going from crisis to crisis and it was very difficult to be away. It has worked out, and I think a lot of that is just the great people we have and the ability for them to own and manage and make decisions.

Gamble:  You’ve alluded a couple of times to talking with companies in Silicon Valley; all of this kind of adds up to really a culture of innovation. I know that that’s a goal for a lot of organizations, and I wanted to talk about how you can foster that culture and not make it something that’s kind of forced.

Lewkowski:  Well, the thing I’m proud of the most is our staff and our people. We have the best people. We may be small; in fact, we are extremely small when compared to other Epic sites or even sites in the city, but we have extremely good, creative, innovative, and smart people. They come up with a lot of the ideas; they work with the vendors to challenge them, to help work with their designers and engineers as to the kind of features and functions that we need to make happen in healthcare, and that has fostered them to not only have this continued focus on innovation and continue to improve that,