Brian Tew, VP & CIO, Greater Hudson Valley Health System, Chapter 3

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

Chapter 2

Chapter 3



* Reaching HIMSS Stage 7 — “It completely changed some of the workflows.”

* Leveraging of Epic’s “bells & whistles”

* Upgrading to version 2016

* 8 years at Catholic Medical Center — “I worked my way out of a job.”

* Coming to GHVHS “with my eyes open.”

* Peaks of knowledge & experience

* From geeks to fortune teller

* “Managing expectations is key.”



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Bold Statements

The biggest piece was communicating to the people that are using Epic all the bells and whistles that come with it. You would think that that’s the easy piece of it, but it’s not. It’s constantly being visible, constantly being out there and showing the different tools that actually exist within the EMR.

When this opportunity came along, I knew that this was going to be a lot of work. And so I felt like I came in with my eyes open, but it’s kind of like reading a book about going through childbirth and then actually going through childbirth — you only know what you know until you experience it.

In the very beginning, you had to be a geek. You had to really understand the technology and how it works. But as the job progressed, I had to become an expert in workflow and processes, and really had to see how different service lines can leverage technology to improve the care that we provide to our patients. And now it’s taking the next step to where I have to see in the future.

I’m constantly letting people know the workload that we have and the resources that we have, just so that they can appreciate that IT is hard. It’s hard to implement. It’s expensive to implement, and we have to add value. That constant communication and being able to manage these expectations is just key.

Gamble:  You’re talking about getting to stage 7 in a short amount of time, but that doesn’t happen if there aren’t already some really strong pieces in place. Was there anything that stood out as a challenge in obtaining that?

Tew:  Again, it’s the resources. As an organization, we staff at the 25th percentile. When you’re leveraging a product like Epic, on the surface you might you need less resources, but once you start peeling the layers, you realize that you’re doing more with the technology and you actually need more resources. So as an organization, we staff at the 25th percentile and that’s just hard. We still had to do breastmilk and blood barcoding. We had to implement those things. We had to get all the papers scanned within the chart in 24 hours, and so that took additional resources, and it took additional equipment and completely changed some of the workflows.