Laishy Williams-Carlson, CIO, Bon Secours Health System, Chapter 1

It’s funny; sometimes the most pivotal moments in one’s career occur when least expected. For Laishy Williams-Carlson, the moment came when news of the Anthem data breach hit shortly after she was promoted to corporate CIO at Bon Secours Health, and she was asked to provide an update of her organization’s cybersecurity strategy. What she had realized, however, was that she wasn’t as equipped as she would’ve liked to address the issue. But instead of covering this up, Williams-Carlson chose to be honest with the board, and found that it helped build a level of credibility she may not have otherwise achieved.

In this interview, she spoke with healthsystemCIO.com about the major projects on her team’s plate, from the “never-ending” journey to implement and optimize Epic, to the “huge shift in thinking” required to move toward population health, and what she believes is a critical element when merging cultures. Williams-Carlson also talks about why she believes her finance background serves her well, what changed her feelings about the role female executives play in advancing other women, and why she believes diversity in leadership is so critical.

Chapter 1



* About Bon Secours

* Merging IT cultures — “It starts by finding a commonality.”

* Focus on ‘why,’ not ‘how’

* Adding small practices without acting like “big brother”

* Providing “seamless care” across the continuum with Epic Connect

* The “never-ending” rollout: “There are days when I want to say, where is the finish line?”

* Focus on interoperability



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Bold Statements

One of the best ways to start is to find out where you have commonality. A lot of times, I think we forget that we’re all focused on the same ‘why’ and sometimes we get wrapped around the actual about the ‘how’ and the ‘what.’

It’s easy to focus on hospital acquisitions and big buildings, and forget that every time you employ a physician or acquire a practice, there is a culture that begins working with our culture.

There is that polarity between trying to be nimble and fast to respond to our providers’ needs — and, more importantly, our patients’ needs — while also meeting all those other requirements.  It’s quite a challenge.

There are days where I just want to say, where is the finish line? And then you realize there is no finish line. Even in places where we have it implemented, we need to be focused on continually improving what the solution does.

We went all in, and we feel like that’s the best, easiest way to have integration and interoperability.

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

Williams-Carlson:  My pleasure. It’s nice to talk with you.

Gamble:  I think the best way to start is to get a high level look at Bon Secours, just to give our readers and listeners a bit of an idea of the organization.

Williams-Carlson:  We are a Catholic health system. I think like all other health systems, we’re very focused on transitioning from what has traditionally been a hospital-based system to a system that more fully embraces the spectrum of care and is focused more on ambulatory services. We have locations that we organize into what we call local systems, something like a region, from New York down through Florida. We don’t necessarily acute care presence in all of these locations, but our two biggest local systems are in the Commonwealth of Virginia in Richmond and in Hampton Roads.

We also have pretty robust presence in South Carolina and Kentucky, and we have a skilled nursing facility in Florida, which just successfully and safely weathered Hurricane Irma, so a lot of our business continuity plans that we had done previously got put to good use...