Podcast Interview with CIO Robert Eardley, Part 1: “It All Goes Back to the Concept of Need.”

Don’t lose sight of the ultimate goal.

For CIOs, who have spent the past six months scrambling to implement tools that enable providers to practice care, all while establishing a remote workforce and ensuring the lights are kept on, keeping an eye toward the future may seem impossible. Or at the very least, counterintuitive. But if the organization is to thrive — and not just survive — it’s precisely what needs to happen, according to Robert Eardley, CIO at University Hospitals.

Taking inspiration from author Jim Collins, Eardley believes leaders who are focused mainly on completing the next project on-time and under budget are at risk of missing the big picture. On the other hand, those focused on making “a series of good decisions build on top of each other” can help their teams achieve success.

During a recent interview, Eardley spoke with healthsystemCIO about why it’s so critical to think long-term, what he considers to be the top qualities in future leaders, and the keys to successful change management. He also talked about the evolution of consumer engagement (and the role IT plays), how UH is working to keep healthy patients at home, and his thoughts on the power of ‘need.’

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Key Takeaways



* University Hospitals, a 14-hospital system based in Northeast Ohio, is currently using both Allscripts and Cerner, but is planning to eventually move to a single integrated platform.

* The benefits of an integrated platform are “undeniable,” particularly in building a foundation for value-based care.

* One of the key initiatives for UH in recent months has been to create analytic dashboards that provide “an enterprise view of patient activity” as well as inventory of beds and ventilators.

* The biggest driver in moving toward a data-driven culture was the need, which became clear during the pandemic.

* Creating an incident command structure at the enterprise level — and not at the hospital level — helped produce visualization reports that benefited the entire organization.





Q&A with Robert Eardley, Part 1

Gamble:  Can you start by providing an overview of University Hospitals — what you have in terms of beds, where you’re located, things like that?

Eardley:  University Hospitals is in Northeast, Ohio, centered out of Cleveland. We have 14 hospitals, and about 35 health centers and 350 physician offices. We’ve got about $4.5 billion in net patient revenue and about 2,700 physicians employed by the health system and about 4,500 physicians overall.

 

Gamble:  So obviously a pretty good-sized system. What type of EHR do you have in place?

Eardley:  We primarily have Allscripts and Cerner. We use Cerner’s Soarian product line for scheduling and billing, and we use various Allscripts products, including Sunrise in the hospital setting and TouchWorks in the physician offices. We also use DbMotion, a product that marries the two together; FollowMyHealth, a patient portal; and Care Director, an application that helps us do population health.

 

Gamble:  I guess the million dollar question would be, are you planning to move to a single platform?

Eardley:  There have been talks about a single integrated platform. We’ve looked at the marketplace recently. Earlier this year, we were entertaining options with our current supplier – Allscripts, and in the past we’ve looked at Cerner’s product.

The benefits of combining clinical records from the physician office and the hospital are undeniable. And with the move toward population health and ...