Ken Lawonn, SVP & CIO, Sharp HealthCare, Chapter 2

To say that security has gained traction as a priority is quite an understatement. In fact, Ken Lawonn gets more questions about security from his CEO and board than any other topic. And so it should come as no surprise that Sharp has changed its entire approach, creating an IT risk management department and recruiting its first CISO. In this interview, Lawonn talks about the rapid evolution of Sharp’s security strategy, how the organization looks to leverage its managed care expertise to thrive in the population health world, and his thoughts on integration — including what his team is currently doing to provide a unified view of data, and how this plan may change in the future. He also discusses what it was like to go from being the acquiring party at Alegent Health to being acquired, why he made the move to San Diego, and what it’s been like to fill Bill Spooner’s shoes.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2



* Health plan & the “interesting dynamic” with payers

* Creating an IT risk management department

* Educational awareness — “Healthcare workers tend to be trusting.”

* Rise of the CISO

* Posturing for pop health — “It’s not scalable with the existing technology.”

* Mobility steering committee

* Allscripts’ FollowMyHealth portal



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Bold Statements

As we are looking at moving into more of a population health strategy and taking more risks, we really understand that much better because we’ve been doing it both from the managed care perspective, and also from the health plan perspective.

We have to continue to mature. We’re going to have to invest more money in this. We not only have to continue to look at our perimeter and trying to keep people out, but we also have to move it to how quickly can you detect a breach and then how do you respond, because everybody’s vulnerable.

It’s probably the area that we spend the most time on and wish we didn’t have to, but you’ve got to protect the organization, and the patients and the people that work here. All their information is in our hands.

You have to have someone who has that background and expertise that can work with the senior executives and the board and have conversations about the risks, about what’s going on in the industry, what you’re doing, what you’re plan is. The CIOs have been asked to present that and I think a lot of us do it, but I really believe we need an executive in that area that can help us develop a plan and communicate it to the organization.

If we want to manage more chronic patients or try to stay connected with the healthy patients, we really need to leverage technology. So we’re in the process right now of evaluating a population health platform that would provide us with analytics, care coordination, and patient engagement.

Gamble:  The fact that Sharp has a health plan, how does that play into this? Does it complicate matters or in some ways does it ease the situation?

Lawonn:  I think it’s both a challenge and a benefit. I think the challenge is just that we have to support a rapidly growing health plan, and traditionally we’ve tried to do it on existing systems, so we’ve been leveraging our managed care product that we have from GE to support the health plan. But as that plan gets more complicated and grows, we have to look at other tools, and right now we’re in the process of implementing a new system to support for the health plan. So that creates additional pressure and challenges in the IT arena in the organization to be able to support that system, but it really is a benefit and it helps us understand how health plans are viewing information.