Brian Tew, VP & CIO, Greater Hudson Valley Health System, Chapter 1

When Brian Tew arrived at Greater Hudson Valley Health System two years ago — as the organization’s third CIO in 3 years — he knew he had his work cut out. But despite the fact that 40 percent of the IT positions were vacant, Tew knew that the core group in place was strong; what they needed was some stability. And so he was deliberate in his approach, building a leadership team from the ground up and improving processes one at a time. Within 20 months, GHVHS had achieved HIMSS Stage 7  recognition, and Tew’s plans don’t stop there. In this interview, he talks about what it took to change the organization’s mentality, the challenge of “keeping the lights on” while developing standards and setting up committees, the biggest priorities he hopes to tackle, and why managing expectations is absolutely critical.

Chapter 1



* About Greater Hudson Valley HS

* Epic across the board — “We approach everything as a system.”

* Bringing in non-employed docs

* IT:  20% technical and 80% communication.”

* Epic Community Connect

* Going live 2 weeks into his role — “There was no moss growing under my feet.”



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Bold Statements

The senior level team has gelled and we approach everything as a system, especially within IT. Our approach is whatever we do, we have to make sure that everybody’s plugged in, regardless of which site they’re in.

Within IT, it’s 20 percent technical and 80 percent communication. We have the governance structure in place and we try to make ourselves visible and available to the community providers, making sure we’re meeting their needs as they come in and use our facilities to treat their patients.

A big priority of mine was to first hire good leadership, and then get them fully engaged in what we were doing. The consultants we had actually did a very good job, but they’re consultants, and they’re going to leave and all of that knowledge is going to walk out the door with them.

The impression some of the leaders had was that they were broken, and I quickly saw that they weren’t broken. I was the third CIO in three years; 40 percent of thee FTE’s within the team were vacant. My top priority was to build a leadership team to support this core group.

Gamble:  Hi Brian, thank you so much for taking some time to speak with HealthSystemCIO.com.

Tew:  Hey Kate, how are you?

Gamble:  Doing good, thanks. I’m looking forward to what to chatting with you. To start things off, can you give an overview of Greater Hudson Valley Health System — what you have in terms of hospitals, bed size, where you’re located?

Tew:  Greater Hudson Valley, as the title says, is in the Hudson Valley, west of the Hudson River in New York, about an hour north of the city. We have two regional medical centers, one in Orange County and one in Sullivan County, and we also have a critical access hospital in Sullivan County. So it’s and Catskill Regional Medical Center, and they have two sites. The total beds are north of 600; we probably staff around 500 beds.

The organization, when I arrived, just started the medical group. It’s a unique area. I left New Hampshire, where almost 100 percent of all the providers are employed — in the Hudson Valley that is definitely not the case. So we’ve just started our medical group. We currently have about 90 providers, and we plan to grow that by about 20 percent each year for the next few years.

Gamble:  That’s interesting to have such a difference in two different areas.

Tew:  And it’s not that far away. If you go down into the city, it’s the same thing where everybody is pretty much employed. But here, it’s just a little different. You have some entrepreneur providers in this area, and there are clinical partners,