David Bensema, MD, CIO, Baptist Health, Chapter 3

As an internal medicine physician, one of the most important lessons David Bensema learned was that if he was going truly engage with a patient, he first needed to establish trust. As CIO, he employs that same strategy to engage with physicians — something that doesn’t always come easy, even for an MD. In this interview, Bensema talks about what has surprised him most during his first year as CIO; the tough part when it comes to creating a task force of the “best and brightest”; and the strategy his team is using to roll out Epic across 7 hospitals. He also discusses why he doesn’t like the word ‘optimization,’ how he keeps the end user’s needs as top priority, and the one thing that needs to change when it comes to CIOs and project planning.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3



* Physician engagement

* “We don’t get relationships sitting in offices. You have to get out.”

* Lessons learned in change management

* Biggest surprises about becoming a CIO

* Anticipatory staffing — “It’s not a sustainable model.”

* Learning project management as an executive medical director

* Coming to Baptist in 2001 — “I knew I’d found home.”



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Bold Statements

They’re not upset really with you — they’re upset with change. They’re upset with the disruption they’re seeing in multiple levels in their practices. And you have to just let them go through it.

Their concern for patient safety and the quality of care that our patients experience I would say rivals that of anyone at the bedside. I am just overwhelmed by the commitment of the staff.

Anticipatory staffing is lacking in the IT world. We just keep getting projects thrown in without increment in staff. That’s not a sustainable model.

Just because you found the perfect practice to acquire or just because you found the perfect site to put some people, doesn’t mean you’re there. Negotiating the lease is just the beginning.

On my first day, I said, ‘You all have to understand, I’m a kindergartener. I don’t know much. Please teach me. Every day, teach me.  If you start to use a term assume I don’t know what it means.’

Gamble:  With the work you did with physician engagement, was there anything that kind of sticks out to you that could be helpful to CIOs just as far as maybe some of the lessons you learned or just any takeaways from that as far as just what it took to get through that change management piece with physicians.

Bensema:  I go right back to being an internal medicine physician and when I walked in a room with a new patient I knew what the priority was. It was that patient; developing a relationship of trust was the priority to make sure that patient was well taken care of. It’s the same with my physician colleagues. To engage the physicians you need a relationship, and we don’t get relationship sitting in offices. In a system like ours, I don’t get a relationship sitting in Louisville at the headquarters. You’ve got to get out, and that’s really hard.

To your point about CIOs having a lot on their plate, it is really hard, but if you don’t make that effort, they’re not going to assume it’s that important. So I get around to the physician staff meetings. I get around out on the floors. I make sure that people know me face-to-face if they want to chew on me, because my physician colleagues do when you go out and you represent IT. My wife’s a practicing pathologist and she said when I went into administrative roles, I went to the dark side. You’ve heard that one before.