Brian Sterud, VP of IT & CIO, Faith Regional Health Services, Chapter 2

When Brian Sterud meets with his staff, he often asks two questions: “What can we do to make this more productive,” and “What did we not do well enough?” Not just because continuous improvement is a key priority for the organization, but because it provides a platform for construction criticism, something he feels is crucial. In this interview, Sterud talks about the momentous decision his team is about to embark upon, why switching from one EHR system to another is almost more difficult than going from paper to electronic, the “sense of urgency” across the industry to beef up security, and the “holy grail” when it comes to portal adoption. He also talks about the enormous impact CHIME Boot Camp has had on his professional growth, and the characteristics CIOs need to have going forward.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2



* The “Holy Grail” for portals

* Security & the industry-wide “Sense of urgency”

* External penetration tests & internal threat tests

* Security committee with cross-section representation

* “We have the platform to have the discussions that we need to have.”

* Having a CEO who “gets it.”

* MU 2 attestation with providers



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Bold Statements

The next step or the Holy Grail would be the more local providers we could sign up to exchange with our portal, the better off our community is, because they’d be able to view all their data in that one patient portal.

It’s really created a sense of urgency in our industry and caused a lot more focus on security, which was bound to happen if you consider the fact that we’re really trying to make up for 20 or 30 years within a four- to five-year span. It was ripe for security issues.

They’re interested now. They’ve seen enough articles that it’s a conversation they’re interested in having and they’re engaged, maybe more so than they would have been a couple of years ago.

The best practice would be to have a full-time security officer that reported either directly to the board or maybe even directly to the CEO in some fashion so that they don’t have the reporting relationship up through IT. There’s just too much risk in having it done that way.

We don’t have to make that argument. He understands it, he gets it, and he knows how important it is. And it’s not just him. Everyone in senior management understands the value of IT, and so it’s nice that you don’t have to make that case.

Gamble:  As far as the portal, you talked about having a good success rate. It does seem like, from what we’ve hear, that that’s a good percentage. I imagine that that’s something you have to keep building toward. Do you have plans for mobile access to the portal or anything like that?

Sterud:  That’s coming with the next upgrade for our product. It wasn’t available at this point, so that will be a nice added feature. There are some other added features as far as user verification and making sure that it’s the right person. Those are some added functionalities that will be coming in our next version. Another thing we’re doing is NextGen in our clinics. We’re just bringing live now the same portal for those clinics. That will allow our patients, our consumers, and our community to be able to sign on and see visits from both the clinics and our hospital in one pane of glass. Really the next step or the Holy Grail would be the more local providers we could sign up to exchange with our portal, the better off our community is, because they’d be able to view all their data in that one patient portal. So that’s be something that we’re going to work on with local providers in the next year or two.