Jeff Sturman, SVP & CIO, Memorial Healthcare System, Chapter 1

When an organization gets a new leader, the inevitable questions faced are: “What’s your vision? Where are we going?” And it’s quite understandable. But if a leader wants to guide the health system in the right direction – and make sure the right pieces are in place to enable progress while also maintaining – there is no immediate answer. At least, not until the CIO has taken the time “get to know your people,” according to Jeffrey Sturman.

When he assumed the role at Memorial Health last summer, his first task was to become familiarized with everyone from the internal IT team to operational leadership to vendors. And only then did he start to shape his vision.

Recently, Sturman spoke with healthsystemCIO about the key objectives his team has identified, why he returned to Memorial after six years in consulting (and how he hopes to leverage that experience), and how the organization is transitioning from a reactive to a proactive strategy when it comes to data security. Sturman also discusses the “people side” of project management, what he would’ve done differently during his first stint with Memorial, and what it takes to grow leaders.

Chapter 1



* About Memorial Healthcare (aka South Broward Hospital District)

* Deploying Epic first in physician practices, then hospitals

* “It worked out well for us, but if I were to do it today, I’d do it differently.”

* Long-term goal of a consolidated data warehouse – “We’re trying to figure out next steps.”

* Looking at cloud-based technology

* Going from a reactive to a proactive cybersecurity approach – “I’m really proud of the team and what they’ve done so far.”

* Creating a single source of analytics – “This will be years in the making.”



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Bold Statements

If I had my choice, I probably would have gone to one of our smaller facilities first if it was a phased rollout. But if I were to do it all over, I would have done it even quicker. I would’ve torn that Band-Aid off and gone everyone live even faster.

We have great capabilities and very knowledgeable resources, but the shift to more cloud-based technology, moving away from a very big infrastructure, is something we are looking at.

I saw how things were in the past, and where we are today is vastly different. We were a very reactive environment until certain things happened; now I think we have a certain level of proactive behavior and the ability to not just monitor, but really address issues before they become issues.

The vision is that they all go to a single splash page, and that we all really work together and triage the reporting requirements as needed. That’s a game changer, I think, for the way in which this organization has worked.”

Gamble:  Hi Jeff, thank you so much for taking some time to speak with us. Let’s start things off with a high-level overview of Memorial Healthcare System — what you have in terms of hospitals, physician groups, and where you’re located.

Sturman:  Memorial Healthcare System, which is actually known as South Broward Hospital District, is located in South Florida, and headquartered in Hollywood. We are six hospitals, with our biggest being in Hollywood and going across the South Broward District west. We really span the entire district and have a nice footprint here.

Our six hospitals are Memorial Regional Hospital and the Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital, which share a campus on the east side of town, then we have Memorial Hospital Pembroke, Memorial Hospital Miramar, Memorial Hospital West and Memorial Regional Hospital South. It’s a total of 1,800 beds. We have about 2,000 physicians on our medical staff, with about 300 employed physicians, mostly specialists.