Podcast Interview with CMIO Brett Oliver, Part 1: “It’s Been an Overnight Culture Change.”

There’s an interesting dynamic that happens when an organization faces a crisis. The compounding factors of stress, fear, and exhaustion can cut right to the core, and individuals are separated into two groups: naysayers and believers. And it’s the believers — the ones who focus on how to get things done, rather than why they aren’t getting done — who lift up everyone around them, according to Brett Oliver, MD, CMIO at Baptist Health.

Recently, Oliver spoke with healthsystemCIO about how his team is dealing with the myriad challenges of Covid-19, from connectivity to infrastructure concerns, and the enormous culture change he has seen when it comes to rolling out solutions. He also talks about why it’s important to have an aggressive digital health strategy, where Baptist Health has succeeded and struggled in fighting the pandemic, and the unique opportunity it presents for clinicians and IT to partner more effectively.

Part 1



* Disaster preparedness challenges – “It impacts morale.”

* Rapid growth in virtual visits – “It’s tested the limits of our capabilities.”

* Pride in having “everyone pulling in the same direction.”

* Addressing hesitation with quick rollouts

* “We have to do this.”

* The “overnight culture change” for both IT and clinicians

* Positive feedback from patients

* Connectivity concerns in rural areas – “There are still issues.”



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Bold Statements

It’s a real challenge to prepare for the disaster that could be coming to your area, and at the same time start game planning — what does this have to look like on the other side so we can be viable moving forward?

It’s giving them the comfort level to say, ‘no one’s coming after you. I’ll take the heat if something goes wrong, but it’s okay to let this go right now. I know you haven’t done this level of testing or gotten this feedback, but we’ve got to go forward.’

I still think we can do a better job with interfaces to the patients. Epic’s portal, MyChart, is excellent, but there are still things that make it a little clunky, and so continuing to improve will be a good thing.

If your scale is 10 or 15 video visits a day, you tend to forget that it can’t be done well in some areas. Well, when you scale up and now a third of your visits are virtual, all of a sudden that becomes important. We can’t provide that care.



Gamble:  When you did a webinar with us recently, you talked about being in a holding pattern, waiting for Covid-19 to hit. What are some of the challenges there, and how does it impact your ability to plan?

Oliver:  It certainly impacts morale for one, because you’re working on adrenaline. It’s like pulling an all-nighter, whether you’re working in an ER or you’re a student; if you hit a lull or stop, that’s dangerous.

It’s also economically challenging. Our revenues are down tremendously. It’s hard for a lot of the country to recognize this. They think, ‘healthcare is fine; they’re getting slammed. Yes, it’s happening in certain parts of the country, but it’s happening in the ER, and as hospital finance folks know, your medical beds don’t pay the bills. It’s your surgeries, outpatient procedures, and radiology, all of which essentially stopped. And so it’s a real challenge to prepare for the disaster that could be coming to your area, and at the same time start game planning — what...