Michael Archuleta, Director of IT, Mt. San Rafael Hospital, Chapter 1

For many critical access hospitals, the future looks bleak. They have the same list of priorities as health systems, but with a fraction of the resources. But Mt. San Rafael is not your typical rural hospital, and Michael Archuleta is not your typical leader. Since taking on the IT Director role four years ago, Archuleta has led the transformation from a paper-based system to a Most Wired hospital. In this interview, he discusses the enormous challenges faced by CAHs, how he’s changing the perception of IT from one of “cost center” to “business partner,” and what it took to implement the organization’s first IT strategic plan. Archuleta also talks about the value of young leaders, how he “sold” cybersecurity to the board, what he hopes to accomplish next, and why he won’t apologize for being an over-communicator.

Chapter 1



* About Mt. San Rafael

* Rolling out MedHost as a bare-bones IT shop — “We had nothing.”

* Overhauling infrastructure, data center & equipment

* IT as a business partner

* His handpicked team — “They go above and beyond.”

* Value of young leaders

* “I’m an over-communicator.”



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Bold Statements

It was absolutely amazing to see the individuals finally understanding the need to go to an electronic medical record system and improve documentation, because overall it did improve patient care.

Moving forward with HIT and this new wave of digital health, if you are not leveraging technology to the fullest, and if you are not putting technology as the main backbone of an organization, you will not be successful. Period.

We are challenged to the max. And it’s hard because we’re underfunded, we’re understaffed, and there’s a lack of knowledge of what HIT is doing and why it’s so important to leverage technology — that’s what we need to instill in our individuals, because digital transformation is not stopping.

When I started, we were at barebones. We had different servers in different laundry room locations and different switches in clean linen rooms. There was nothing standardized. There was no advanced technology in place. I was even saying, ‘can we really do this, especially with what we have?’

It’s been stated at times that maybe I’m an over-communicator. Well, I am an over-communicator; communication is my number one key aspect. Without communication, we have nothing.

Gamble:  Hi Michael, thanks so much for taking some time to speak with healthsystemCIO.com.

Archuleta:  Thank you, Kate, for having me today.

Gamble:  To give our readers and listeners some background, can you give an overview of Mt. San Rafael Hospital, what you have in terms of bed size, ambulatory, where you’re located, things like that?

Archuleta:  Mt. San Rafael Hospital is a 25-bed critical access facility serving the medical and surgical needs of residents Trinidad and surrounding areas. We are located in Southern Colorado, about three and a half hours from Denver. We currently have our hospital and we have two clinic facilities.

Gamble:  As far as other hospitals, what do you have nearby — is there anything that close to you?

Archuleta:  The next biggest hospital is 90 miles away from us, which is Parkview Medical Center.

Gamble:  So it’s a pretty rural population that you’re serving?

Archuleta:  Absolutely. We are in a rural community; the population right now is around 9,000 individuals. So of course, we’re really trying to boost our services here at Mt. San Rafael and really try to get some more surrounding individuals to basically come to our facility. When you live in a rural community you really need to provide the best services to the surrounding individuals, because at times it is very hard for our elderly population to go 90 m...