Cindy Peterson, VP & CIO, Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital, Chapter 1

For today’s leaders, it really is all about collaboration — both with vendors and the executive team, says Cindy Peterson, who has been CIO at Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital since 2001. With vendors, it means engaging in ongoing communication and being involved in each other’s strategic planning processes, and with the executive team, it means earning trust by being consistent and delivering what is expected. In this interview, Peterson talks about how her team is working to deliver data more effectively to clinicians, the one question leaders should ask with any application, and what she has found to be the key in maintaining a successful partnership with Meditech.

Chapter 1



* About Henry Mayo

* Migrating to Meditech 6.16 — “We’ll be an early adopter.”

* Working with Web Acute

* The big question: “How does it improve patient care?”

* Pushing vs pulling data

* Vendor management — “It’s a two-way street.”

* Including vendors in IT strategic planning



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Bold Statements

It’s a lot of collaboration that’s going back and forth in trying to making this product the best it can be. We want to make sure that we’re not going backwards on any functionality, but only moving forward with additional functionality and improving processes, patient safety, and patient care at the hospital.

We’ve got to make sure that whatever we’re developing and rolling out is going to be what’s best for operations and improving patient care. That’s always the key component.

The key is providing information that they need to see, when they need to see it. Instead of having to click down through multiple pages to find the information you want, this is a system that’s more intuitive and knows what information you’re going to want to see in a particular page.

It needs to be a partnership, that there is no software out there that’s perfect. You have to understand that. And you have to have a relationship with that vendor where there is ongoing communication and ongoing collaboration, and there’s give-and-take.

We need to be engaged with them in their processes and their focus groups and maybe sometimes be early adopter, and they too need to be engaged in what we’re doing and understand our organization and understand where we’re going.

Gamble:  Hi Cindy, thank you for taking the time to speak with us. To lay some groundwork, Henry Mayo Newhall is a not-for-profit community hospital with around 238 beds?

Peterson:  Correct.

Gamble:  And as far as physician groups or affiliated positions, what does that landscape look like?

Peterson:  We currently do not own any medical groups or have any physicians employed. The only physician groups we have are contract services with are ER physicians, and we have some hospitalists. But when it comes to medical groups, we don’t have any of that in our facility.

Gamble:  And that’s not something that’s in the plans for any time soon?

Peterson:  No. Our strategy is really to work with multiple medical group organizations at the facility, but not actually to have an MSO or a foundation, because in California, you have to have a service agreement with medical groups or you have to have a foundation that was created.

Gamble:  In the hospital, you’re a long-time user of Meditech. What version are you on at this point?

Peterson:  Currently we’re on 5.66 client server. We’ve been on client server from the moment we went live with them in 2007.

Gamble:  Are there any plans to upgrade or go to a different version?

Peterson:  Yes, our plans are to go to version 6.16. We’re in the middle of the implementation right now. We’ll be an early adopter of that version, and we’ll be an early adopter for the new Web Acute application that’...