Q&A With CHIME Public Policy Award Recipient Randy McCleese, Chapter 2

If you want to drive real change, you’re going to have to get personal. It’s one of many lessons Randy McCleese has learned during his career, both as CIO at St. Claire Regional Medical Center, and as a member of CHIME’s Policy Steering Committee. Rather than just present Congressional leaders with facts and figures, McCleese describes the challenges that his and other rural organizations face in meeting complex regulatory requirements, and it’s made a difference. In this interview, he talks about the work his team has done during the past few years, and what they hope to accomplish in the future. McCleese also touches on the difficulties facing vendors, the value in partnering with outside organizations, and why CIOs need to be more strategic.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2



* Education through real-life experiences

* His “a-ha” moment

* The future of HIT policy: “I don’t see the underlying effort changing.”

* Collaboration among small & rural orgs — “We’ve got to do those things in order survive.”

* CHIME’s focus on interoperability & standardization

* 21 years at St. Claire

* “CIOs have to be more strategic.”



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Bold Statements

Any updates, any reprogramming, any changes affect our workflow, as well as how the patient data it is inputted and then displayed. It may be minute in one area and great in another, but we’ve got to test those things and make sure that they work the way we need them to work.

We don’t see a significant change in the efforts that we’re trying to do inasmuch as we’re trying to get electronic systems in place to better the care of patients and reduce the cost. That’s what we’re trying to do. Regardless of the political change, I don’t see the basic underlying effort changing.

CIOs have to be more on the strategic end. I’m talking about how do we get out there and exchange data with other healthcare providers. The CIO is going to have to be out there on the front end of that, pointing out how we’re going to have to do that.

Traditionally IT has been in the support role for the corporate strategies, but to me, IT has bubbled up to the top, to the point that it’s a strategic weapon. Because those organizations that do a better job of utilizing technology are the ones that, in healthcare, do a better job of taking care of the patient and do it more efficiently and more effectively.

Gamble:  And when you talked about some of the conversations that go on when you’re meeting with policymakers, is a lot of it telling them some of the experiences you’ve had, like with the system update that was supposed to be happening in November — just giving real-life examples of what you go through?

McCleese:  It has been, and those are the kinds of things that mean a lot to them. Because we’re dealing with, in some cases, specific patient experiences. In this case, this is a specific implementation experience. And yeah, that’s really what they want to hear — how difficult is it for us to do some of these things. Ultimately, I think we’ve all got the same train of thought; we want to do a better job of taking care of the patients.

Gamble:  Sure. And when you do speak to them, do you think sometimes they are surprised by what they hear? Because if you’re not the one who’s actually in using these information systems, I am sure it’s easy to be kind of removed from it.

McCleese:  Yeah. This is a little bit dated, but one of the things that we noticed was some of the folks did not realize that it takes anywhere near as long as it does to put a system in place and go through the testing process that we have to go through in ...