Jim Venturella, CIO, WVU Medicine, Chapter 2

Stepping in as the new CIO is never easy, particularly if you’re filling the shoes of a longtime leader who ushered the organization into the digital era. So when Jim Venturella took the helm at WVU Medicine, he knew he had a fine line to walk. He wanted to be patient enough not to push for any changes without first understanding the processes, while still pushing his team to do their best. In this interview, Venturella talks about what it was like to take over for Rich King, why he welcomed the opportunity to lead a system-wide transformation, and the role that having an integrated EHR can have in uniting an organization. He also discusses his roadmap for the Epic changes at WVU Medicine, what he believes are the biggest challenges for today’s CIOs, and why he still “operates as a consultant.”

Chapter 1

Chapter 2



* Data warehouse — “There are a lot of capabilities we haven’t fully utilized.”

* Self-service with advanced analytics

* Prioritization — “Everyone’s always balancing.”

* “Huge opportunity” for telemedicine

* Epic Care Everywhere vs state HIE — “It’s materially different on what’s being exchanged.”

* Being “the lead person” at WVU



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Bold Statements

We’re in the early stage of defining our full strategy of what we want to do around analytics and getting people to start to utilize some of the new tools that are available to them. There’s a lot of capabilities that we have that we haven’t fully utilized, so the plan is to work with the different operational units to help enable them with what we already have.

Like everyone else, we do lots of reporting and we have lots of dashboards and we present information, but we really haven’t done a whole lot at this point from a more advanced analytics standpoint.

There is a huge opportunity for telemedicine. There are some other barriers around some of the other infrastructure and population that we need to overcome, but I think those are coming down rather quickly. The consumer movement is changing some of those things.

As we move more into the ACO model, and with all our payers take on more of the risk, I think everyone in our organization understands that we may have to spend money on things that we’re not necessarily getting directly reimbursed for, but are going to have another financial benefit from a bigger picture standpoint.

From a cultural standpoint it appeared to be a great fit, and fortunately it’s been probably even better than I thought. It’s been a really wonderful experience.

Gamble:  You mentioned analytics. What are some things you’re doing now in that area?

Venturella:  We just brought up Epic’s data warehouse a month ago. That’s an area where we’re in the early stage of defining our full strategy of what we want to do around analytics and getting people to start to utilize some of the new tools that are available to them. There’s a lot of capabilities that we have that we haven’t fully utilized, so the plan is to work with the different operational units to help enable them with what we already have. And in parallel, we’re doing some evaluation of some other third parties to say do we have some gaps that we need to plug in, or in the short term do we have enough capability already with what we already own?

Gamble:  So this is still pretty new in the game as far as having that particular data warehouse, but I imagine once more of these things are figured out, it will be a matter of the users being able to play around with it more and see what they can do?

Venturella:  Exactly, yes. Self-service is a big part of that strategy in figuring out the right model to enable the...