CIO Aaron Miri, CIO, Dell Medical School & UT Health Austin, Chapter 1

One of the most common pieces of advice offered by those in leadership positions is to take risks. Get out of your comfort zone. It’s solid guidance, and for the most part, isn’t difficult to follow — unless, of course, you’ve been on the losing end of a big gamble. In 2015, Aaron Miri accepted a leadership role with an organization that aimed to make patient care a luxury experience. But after just a few years, Walnut Hill Medical Center closed its doors due to financial troubles. For most, the experience would be enough to scare them away from risky moves.

Fortunately, Aaron Miri isn’t most people. Last summer, he assumed the CIO role at Dell Medical School at UT Health Austin, a cutting-edge organization that places a high value on value-based care, innovation, and using social determinants to improve care. For Miri, the opportunity to return to his home state of Texas and work alongside some of the brightest people in the industry was too good to pass up.

In this interview, he talks about why he was willing to take another leap of faith, why he’s a strong believer in ‘open-door leadership,’ and the importance of building a solid professional network.

Chapter 1



* About the organization (includes Dell Medical School, medical practice & research arm)

* Austin’s “up and coming” market

* Updating the medical curriculum

* Being in academia – “The faculty are always eager to hear about what’s on the horizon.”

* Going “all in” on value-based care

* “At the end of the day, it comes back to workflow.”

* Providing “World-class care” for indigent populations



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Bold Statements

I get the best of both worlds. I get to interact with the more traditional physicians and leading pediatric cardiology surgeons in the country, all the way to the year-one medical student who has a glimmer in their eye and wants healthcare to become like Star Trek.

For a place like University of Texas to start a medical academic healthcare program is unheard of. And so for me, the opportunity was one I could not pass up.

At the end of the day, it comes back to the workflow. I tell people all the time, ‘Take the technology out of it, and put it on paper. What would you do? How would you handle it? Then build the technology on top of that process and that workflow.’

We tether those learnings and those teachings back to the real world, back into our healthcare program and say, ‘This is what the textbook says. This is what we learned in real world. Here’s where rubber meets the road. Here’s how you go about it.’

Gamble:  First off, congratulations on your new role as a CIO of Dell Medical School at University of Texas at Austin.

Miri:  Thank you so much, I appreciate that.

 

Gamble:  The best place to start, especially in this case, is with some information about the organization. Can you provide us with an overview?

Miri:  Dell Medical School is the newest medical school in Texas. They’ve been trying to bring a medical school to Austin for a long time. And around the 2015 timeframe the school opened up its doors, and we should be graduating our first class of students next year.

With the school came the UT Health Austin practice, which is a multidisciplinary ambulatory practice that covers everything from oncology to musculoskeletal to women’s health — all sorts of different types of practices. We’ve partnered with Ascension Health System, specifically with the Seton Ministry, to leverage their acute care hospital so that they’re almost a teaching hospital for all of our faculty, our GME program, and our physicians. We also have pediatrics. There’s a Dell Children’s campus, where again we have a close partnership with Ascension.