Kathryn Crous, Network CIO, Kings County Hospital, NYC Health & Hospitals, Chapter 2

Most CIOs deal with a great deal of complexity, but what Kathryn took on when she started with Kings County Hospital nearly a year ago takes it to another level. The hospital is part of NYC Health & Hospitals, which recently began an organization-wide conversion to Epic, while at the same time going through a major governance transition. Adding to it is the fact that NYC H+H is a public system, meaning all leaders report to the mayor’s office. In this interview, Crous talks about what it’s like to lead through change, the advantage she had in having to “test drive” the organization as a consultant first, and her thoughts on the evolution of patient engagement. She also discusses her leadership mantra — “listen twice as much as you speak,” her interest in EMR forensics, and why healthcare shouldn’t be compared to other industries.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2



* Reporting to NYC’s mayor

* “It’s much more complex than anything I’ve worked in before.”

* Engaging with patients through community outreach

* Standardizing IT systems — “We’ve got so many different things that are swirling.”

* From consultant to full-time CIO — “I got to test-drive the job.”

* Talking the clinical & technical talk

* Winning over the CEO



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Bold Statements

This was first role as a public hospital system employee, and I’ve discovered that it’s much more complex than anything I’ve worked in before, and things move much more slowly. I’m used to doing rapid cycle conversions in my consulting roles, and it’s just very different here.

We’re trying to actively participate with the community. We also work with the Brooklyn political leadership to help them understand that we’re here to serve you and we really want to partner with you and meet the needs of a very diverse community.

With my background, I can speak the clinical talk and the technical talk and relate to the physicians in in a very easy way because I can speak their language and I know the workflows, and so it’s been a really fun organization to be a part of.

Having been a consultant and having worked all across the county, you pick some gems of wisdom from every place that you’ve been. And when you’re working with people that have only been in one place, they don’t know a different way to do things, and so it’s been really fun to consider different options and present it in a different way.

Gamble:  You mentioned Ed Marx — that’s an interesting role he has. He’s serving in almost a CIO-consultant type position?

Crous:  Correct.

Gamble:  And he’s someone who you could have a decent amount of accessibility to if you have issues or questions, well I guess really mostly for the hospitals that are really getting ready for go-live?

Crous:  Yes, he’s actively engaged. We hired one of our AVPs who is really running the Epic conversion from Sharp Healthcare in California. She had done a lot of conversions there and she’s brilliant — she really knows what to do. One of the challenges with being a political machine in that we report to the New York City mayor, is every cycle of political change changes some of what happens at the Health and Hospitals level. And so we’re looking at a new mayoral election next year, so things are up in the air. We could potentially change; we could potentially have a new mayor next year. And so all of these people, Ed Marx, Pam Saechow (Senior VP, EMR Implementation and Support), Sal Guido — all of these people report directly to the mayor and the board of directors. And so they have not only the operational and functional responsibilities,