Michael Marino, Chief of IS Operations, Providence St. Joseph Health, Chapter 1

Every career has a pivotal moment. For Michael Marino, it was a lunch meeting with the CEO of St. Joseph Health four years ago, during which she asked if he wanted to serve as CMIO. Marino, then CMO at St. Jude Medical Center, knew it wouldn’t be easy; the system was using nine different instances of Meditech. But he accepted the challenge, and now he faces another in leading St. Joseph through the merger with Providence that became official last summer. In this interview, Marino talks about having an “evolving” IT governance structure, the work they’re doing with predictive analytics, why leaders can never stop learning, and the fine line CIOs must walk in balancing consumerism with the burden placed on clinicians.

Chapter 1



* The mega-merger of St. Joseph & Providence

* An “evolving” IT governance structure

* New title, same day-to-day responsibilities

* Contemplating a move to Epic

* Meditech CMS — “One code base with 3 regional databases.”

* From CMO to CMIO

* 2 types of physicians: those who are influenced and those who influence

* “You can never stop learning.”



LISTEN NOW USING THE PLAYER BELOW OR CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE TO OUR iTUNES PODCAST FEED

Bold Statements

The question become how do we incorporate structures? What do we learn from each other? The difficulty in an organization this big with this many spokes is how do you make sure you know what’s going on so you’re not wasting time and wasting money.

Organizational structures are always interesting because part of them are by design, and part of them are related to personalities. In any org structure you look at you say, ‘Half of what you do makes sense. How did you get these other pieces?’

There’s a difference of applications, but when you’re talking to your colleagues, people are dealing with the same issues. Healthcare IT is healthcare IT from a problem standpoint. Solutions may be different, but everybody’s dealing with the same issues.

It’s a much different role when you’re not comparing how you do quality at your ministry with somebody who does quality at the other ministry, but you’re saying, ‘We’re here to standardize your EHR.’

Gamble:  Thank you so much for taking time to speak with us, I appreciate it.

Marino:  You’re welcome.

Gamble:  To get some background, you’ve been with St. Joseph since June of 2012?

Marino:  I have been at the System Office since June of 2012, but I’ve been with St. Joseph since 1997, 20 years this spring.

Gamble:  Okay. In terms of the merger between St. Joseph and Providence, obviously this was a big one, as it formed the third largest non-profit system in the US. When did it actually become official?

Marino:  The merger became official last July.

Gamble:  From your perspective, what has it been like to go from what was already a large organization to a larger organization, in terms of all the change?

Marino:  I think it’s an exciting time. It’s also a little confusing. The difficulty, as you just described, is that St. Joe’s in isolation was a fair-sized organization. Providence is almost two times that, so it’s taking the time to build relationships with counterparts and be able to debrief what it’s like. So much work gets done with institutional memory or people trying to delegate things out and trying to be able to unpack that and paint a picture for your counterparts so that you can understand what St. Joseph’s like, what Providence Health and Services is like, and then how do we map out a new Providence St. Joseph Health. That takes time.

Gamble:  Right. Now, at this point, how is the IT governance structure set up? Is there a CIO across the organization?

Marino:  It’s still evolving. As of the end of December last year, Janice Newell who was the Providence Health and Services CIO is offi...