Brian Sterud, VP of IT & CIO, Faith Regional Health Services, Chapter 3

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

Chapter 3



* From “hands-on” role to strategic management

* Coming home to Faith Regional

* CHIME Boot Camp & CHCIO certification

* “It was a nice way to advance beyond my years.”

* MBA in healthcare administration

* Today’s CIOs — “You have to be able to adjust very quickly.”

* Transformational vs transactional leaders



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Bold Statements

I definitely felt like that might be a nice opportunity to transition away from being that hands-on expert from a technical perspective, and move a little bit more into the management strategic role. I knew that was something I might want to do.

It gave me the opportunity to try to advance myself by making up for some of what I lacked in years of experience at that time, and bring myself forward rather than literally waiting for those years of experience to be under my belt

You don’t have to reengineer the wheel. You don’t have to create that. You can work with other facilities and gain ideas and maybe adapt them a little bit to your own facility.

I think being open-minded is huge. I think that the new leader — and this is probably industry agnostic — is that transformational leader versus that transactional leader.

If I don’t provide a platform to allow for constructive criticism and constructive ways to improve a process or a meeting or fill in the blank, then I’m really not going to ever be any better tomorrow than I was today.

Gamble:  I noticed you have a background in engineering. Did you plan to stay in that capacity or did your career just kind of progress? How did that work?

Sterud:  Well, what you’re probably seeing in there is engineering from the network engineering perspective. So, like many — actually, I don’t know if everybody necessarily takes that same path — I started hands on working with systems and networks, and evolved through that network engineering role and sort of moved on up from there.

Gamble:  As far as eventually getting into the role you’re in now, is that something you aspired to? It’s interesting too that the CIO role has changed so much in the past couple of years, but is that something that had you zeroed in on at one point and thought, ‘this is what I want to do?’

Sterud:  To be really honest, when I was doing hands on consulting work, I worked for a consulting company where we did installs and that kind of thing for an area. It was a value-added reseller so I had a number of industry certifications and was pretty really technical. One of the customers that I had was a hospital that happened be in my hometown. So there was an opportunity that came about there, and it was a good fit for me.