John Kenagy, PhD, SVP/CIO & CISO, Legacy Health, Chapter 2

With 20 years under his belt, John Jay Kenagy is no rookie to the CIO position — and yet, he’s continuously learning and evolving. In his current post at Legacy Health, he spends more time than ever before focusing on the best way to bring independent physicians into the fold, working to ease their skepticism while at the same time not “overselling.” In this interview, Kenagy talks about his team’s efforts to facilitate data flow throughout an ever-changing organization, the security “arms race” the entire industry is grappling with, and the “people first” philosophy he’s employing while leading through an acquisition. He also discusses what it has been like to work for four such different organizations, the need for “confident, yet humble” leadership, and what he believes is next for the CIO role.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2



* The balancing act of selling a CIN

* Bringing a new hospital into the fold

* Cultural issues with M&A — “You don’t know how things will fit.”

* Communication throughout the process

* Leading through change: “The first priority is people.”

* The “arms race” of protecting data

* The CISO accountability



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Bold Statements

Epic has made a lot of progress on ingesting CCDs from other EMRs as part of a convergence strategy, and the Connect program is pretty large nationwide — even worldwide, and so we’re able to use just basic vanilla technology from our vendor to facilitate that, but it’s still work.

In terms of merger and acquisition, that is a worrying time for the 18 people who work in IS and clinical informatics at Silverton, and I take that very seriously. I take that to heart as a key part of my role and accountability as the CIO to think about the people and their transition.

We put a fair amount of investment into information security protection that really does nothing to foster the mission of healthcare, other than the lack of it would be debilitating to our business.

While I carry the CISO accountability, I use that group that I am a member of — not the chair of — to help Legacy design a very practical, very working and very compliant information security and patient privacy paradigm.

Kate:  It’s interesting when you talk about the people who have the conversations with the independent physicians, because you’re talking about the credibility issue too where it can’t just be IT.

John:  I think it’s a polarity. It’s just something I think we will always have to balance, because as I said earlier, we’re rightfully proud of the accomplishments we’ve made with our EHR partner and very enthusiastic about it. That can come across maybe too boastful or dismissive of other EMRs, or come off like ‘you really need to do this program to be a full member of our clinically integrated network.’ Other clinically integrated networks have done that and have said ‘over three years, you need to transition to the common electronic health record we’re going to support.’ We’ve decided not to do that, I think because our clinically integrated network did not have any high percentage of physicians who had no electronic health record in their office — they were already well on the way of this journey. As I said, it’s this balance between our real enthusiasm and hype and overselling and overzealousness.

Kate:  Right. You said that really the biggest hurdle has been those who were switching from another product.

John:  Yes. Epic has made a lot of progress on ingesting CCDs from other EMRs as part of a convergence strategy, and the Connect program is pretty large nationwide — even worldwide,