Keith Jennings, CIO, Massachusetts General Hospital & Physicians Organization, Chapter 1

A few years ago, Massachusetts General was starting down the path of implementing a new revenue cycle when they hit a bit of a roadblock. The parent organization, Partners HealthCare, had decided to go “soup to nuts” with Epic, meaning that CIO Keith Jennings would have to construct a detour. But when your “world changes,” that’s exactly what a leader needs to do, and so he created in a new roadmap in collaboration with other Partners hospitals. Now, Mass General is in “a much better place,” according to Jennings. In this interview, he discusses the balancing act of keeping the goals of the hospital and Physicians Organization aligned, why his team is planning a staggered go-live, and the work they’re doing with population health. He also talks about how Mass General is working to make innovation and process improvement part of the culture, and what it was like stepping into Jim Noga’s shoes.

Chapter 1



* About Mass General & MGPO

* Governance structure at Partners

* “Natural tension” between CIOs & CMIOs

* Going “soup to nuts” with Epic across Partners

* Live with rev cycle, planning a “staggered wave” for clinicals

* “We’re hoping for some quick wins.”

* Facing a major strategic change — “The world changed.”



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Bold Statements

There needs to be that natural tension. They need to be able to independently push IS to move at the speed of business for them, and I need to be able to independently hold them accountable to standards and security and other pieces that they may want to run past for a moment while they’re trying to achieve the next breakthrough.

We’re very lucky to have this structure where we have the hospital and a single PO. It’s much easier for me to provide uniform service to everybody, and it’s rare that someone says, ‘You seem to be favoring one over the other.’

It dips our toe in the water and lets our largest institution in the system break some of the ice and get up on Epic, and we don’t lose any of that learning and momentum that we had.

We really think we’ll be able to learn from the work that Brigham has done. We shouldn’t suffer any of the mistakes or struggles that they had. We may have new ones, but we really should be able to stand on the shoulders of those giants and do a better job here.

If we went with the hospital and our full PO on the same day, we may have stretched everybody’s limits. And so breaking it up this way again gives us a learning opportunity, get some wins under our belt, and slightly reduces the complexity of that big go-live in April.

Gamble:  Hi Keith, thank you so much for taking some time to speak with us today.

Jennings:  Kate, my pleasure. Thanks so much for having me on your podcast.

Gamble:  Sure. So to give our audience a little bit of an idea, can you just talk about Mass General Hospital and the Physicians Organization, in terms of hospital bed size, affiliates — things like that?

Jennings:  Absolutely. I’m the CIO of Massachusetts General Hospital and the Massachusetts General Physicians Organization. The hospital is a 1,000-bed academic medical center affiliated with Harvard Med School, and the Physicians Organization is an 1,800-provider, large multispecialty group that’s primarily located within the hospital but has presence out in the community.

We’re also a founding member of the Partners HealthCare System. One of our peer institutions is Brigham and Women’s Hospital, along with Newton Wellesley Hospital. We have a handful of community hospitals and post-acute care facilities, and we have McLean Hospital, and a great mental health psychiatric facility. That’s really the scope of our system.

Gamble:  In terms of the governance model, do you report to Jim Noga?