Health IT Influencers: Encore Co-founder & Former CEO Dana Sellers, Chapter 3

We often hear people say, ‘timing is everything.’ For Dana Sellers, that seemed to be the case, as she co-founded two companies — Trinity Computing and Encore Resources — at the time when they were most needed in the industry. But while timing is certainly important, it’s not everything. During her career, which spanned more than three decades, Sellers demonstrated an uncanny knack for leveraging her knowledge and industry relationships to be able to anticipate what’s coming down the pike.

Recently, healthsystemCIO.com spoke with Sellers about the risky move of starting a company during a financial downturn, her strategy when it comes to identifying top talent, why strong governance is essential, and what she considers to be the key challenges – and opportunities – for CIOs.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3



* Prioritization challenges – “The strategic succumbs to the urgent.”

* Using data to manage conditions, not “fix” them

* Working with the Greater Houston HIE board

* Lack of data sharing among independent docs

* “HIT needs to be healthcare information technology, not hospital IT.”

* Her thoughts on MU – “It got us a toehold.”

* CIO’s evolving role – “The power has shifted.”

* Pros of semi-retirement



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Bold Statements

You just have to stay committed and do those strategic sessions so you can get out of the day to day and think about where you’re going. You have to be committed to that, even when the urgent is sitting on your other shoulder talking to you.

It’s almost like HIT today stands for hospital information technology, and not healthcare information technology. We need to make it truly healthcare information technology if we’re going to be able to accomplish all these great things.

They still have issues with being able to drive value from their data, in part because hospitals mostly didn’t have the luxury of implementing a system across the entire organization and calling it a day, saying ‘Great, now let’s use this data.”

Putting an EHR in has never been the end goal, nor is it the step that drives the most value. The value comes when you start to gain true insights from that data; when you can make sure the data is in the right place at the right time.

Gamble:  Do you find that leaders often get stuck in the day to day and don’t focus enough energy on the future?

Dana:  Sure. I always say that the strategic succumbs to the urgent. We’d always have great ideas about having a big strategic planning session, and then a crisis would come up. I think you just have to stay committed and do those strategic sessions so you can get out of the day to day and think about where you’re going. You have to be committed to that, even when the urgent is sitting on your other shoulder talking to you.

 

Gamble:  I’m sure it’s easier said than done when there are so many pressing matters. Now, when you think about where the industry is headed, with this big shift that needs to happen from fee for service to fee for value, what excites you most?

Sellers:  I think we’ve put a great foundation in place in terms of data that can be used to gain amazing insights that will dramatically change the cost of care, the quality of care, and efficiency. But here’s one of the problems. We all talk about aging baby boomers — the fact that care is moving out of the hospital and into other settings,