Chris Paravate, CIO, Northeast Georgia Health System, Chapter 3

If you’re going to be a successful CIO, you need to learn how to do one simple thing: let go, says Chris Paravate. Yes, CIOs need to be aware of what’s going on throughout the organization, but he believes their purpose is to educate, set clear expectations and provide guidance. In this interview, Paravate talks about the groundwork his team is laying to prepare to roll out Epic across the system, why he’s all about workflow training but cautions against overusing consultants, and how NGHS worked to achieve operational engagement. He also talks about the concept of humble leadership, what he learned from Allana Cummings, and what it takes to build a culture inside the IT division.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3



* Customer-centric IT: Supporting “customers, not applications”

* Leveraging technology to improve processes

* “I hate calling the help desk.”

* Leading the Epic rollout at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta

* CIO aspirations

* Working with Allana Cummings — “She and I saw eye-to-eye.”

* From an outsourced shop to in-house IT

* “Unfiltered feedback”



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Bold Statements

His responsibility is to make sure, whether we’re talking about printers or new ERP systems, that he has the ultimate accountability for the support of that division, and that he owns that relationship. He’s the quarterback for support.

It’s about really removing the hassle for customers and understanding where we add value, and making sure that we continue to focus on those value-add activities. But it requires that you have a strong enough relationship with your customers that you’re truly in tuned and you’re listening and anticipating what their needs are.

Are we listening more than we’re talking? Are we following but also anticipating? It’s like that good administrative assistant who anticipated that you needed to see that report and gave it to you. How is IT anticipating what your needs are and advocating for the customer?

Allana and I had worked together before — she was a project manager for me, and I knew that she and I saw eye-to-eye on the values and vision and what IT is capable of doing for an organization. So it was a really good partnership, and something I really enjoyed.

You have to have a strong enough relationship with your leaders that they know you’re committed to them and they know that you care about them and you want them to be successful, but you’re not going to let them perform below what they’re capable of.

Gamble:  Did you find it difficult going from a position where you’re more involved in the IT aspect to a role that involves really more than IT and gets into the organization’s success as a whole with things like increasing revenue?

Paravate:  That’s a really good question. I was talking to the president of the Gainesville campus about a particular project and how IT needed to help participate. And he said, ‘Oh my gosh, we’ve got to have IT at the table; you guys touch everything.’ I think that’s the newer reality — that we are so involved in a lot of aspects.

One of the things I did inside the IT strategy was I painted a picture of what I’m calling the customer-centric IT division where we don’t support applications, we support customers. And those applications may come or go, but those customer needs are really where we’re focused, and so we’ve done some things to shape IT differently. For example, I have a director of business systems and that director is the business partner wit...