Michael Elley, System VP of IT, OhioHealth, Chapter 3

It’s no secret that healthcare lags behind other industries when it comes to adopting and leveraging technology. What smart organizations are learning is that the best way to close the gap is to engage with other businesses. OhioHealth is doing just that by participating in an initiative in which leaders from banking, retail, and other areas share best practices in analytics and cybersecurity. It’s precisely that spirit of innovation that drew Michael Elley to the organization. In this interview, he talks about OhioHealth’s learning lab, how his team is preparing for the value-based care world, and the enormous impact that operational ownership can have on a project’s success. Elley also discusses the pros and cons of both small and large organizations, and why he knows he’s in the right place.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3



* Innovation incubators

* OhioHealth’s culture: “Allow people the ability to try things and fail.”

* First experience with Epic at Owensboro

* Going through M&A — “I wanted a little more operational control”

* Pros and cons of large & small orgs

* CIOs: “It’s like electricity. They’re everywhere.”

* The journey to value-based care – “All aspects of our business are changing.”



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Bold Statements

We really want them to ideate with other parts of our organization, and not so much to think about the support aspect and the traditional ways of looking at IT, but we really want them to just ideate and develop.

You learn more parts of the business when you’re at a small organization; your hands are in more things because you have less people to do all of the work. And that work doesn’t change, no matter the size of the organization.

Today’s CIO is nowhere near what the CIO 10 years ago. Their hands are in so many different areas of the organization. It’s kind of like electricity; they’re everywhere. You really have to have a great understanding for clinical quality, for finance, for ancillary work, for the ambulatory space that we continue to grow

Honestly, it’s difficult to look five years down the road and identify what are we really going to be focused on. In healthcare, that’s a long time because things have been changing so much every 18 months.

Gamble:  Any other thoughts on innovation, as far as what it takes to foster that? When you are in environments where people have so many things that they need to be thinking about, how do you encourage people to think about new ideas?

Elley:  There are two different schools of thought on what we’re looking at here at Ohio Health. On the IT side, we’ve really taken a certain subset of individuals outside of their typical day job of developers and we’ve put them into an incubator environment where we really want them to ideate with other parts of our organization, and not so much to think about the support aspect and the traditional ways of looking at IT, but we really want them to just ideate and develop. So we have created kind of a learning lab for our developers and our people to do that, and that’s what we want them to do.

Ohio Health overall understands innovation can be anybody doing anything. And so it’s really trying to breed that culture throughout Ohio Health to allow people the ability to try things and to fail. We’re toying with the idea of creating also an innovation hub and those types of things. Those are kind of conversational right now, but we recognize the importance of that going forward.