Q&A with CIO Aaron Miri, Part 2: “You Have to Engage, Motivate and Drive Your Team Forward.”

In recent months, some have referred to the rapid adoption of digital health tools as a “silver lining” of Covid-19. Aaron Miri, however, sees it a bit differently. He believes the pandemic has “galvanized and rallied everybody around common causes of humanity,” and has helped increase awareness of healthcare IT’s critical role in care delivery.

“You have to be in the pilot’s seat,” he said during a podcast interview. “If you’re not, the ship is going to crash.” And that doesn’t just mean being in the trenches with your team; it means ensuring they know the value of the work they do, and that it’s appreciated.

For Miri, that opportunity came a few weeks ago when Texas faced massive power outages and severely cold temperatures, forcing leadership to – once again – pivot quickly to make sure frontline workers received adequate support. Recently, he spoke with healthsystemCIO about the challenges in dealing with a crisis on top of a crisis, the “little things” leaders can do to boost morale, why it’s more important than ever to set the right tone when it comes to work-life balance, and how he hopes IT will be able to leverage the “goodwill” it has built during the past year.

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Key Takeaways



* The reason why UT Austin was chosen as one of Texas’ vaccine hubs? “We have capabilities in these facilities, and we have the people,” and therefore are able to make quick decisions.

* Although challenges still remain in terms of managing Covid, it’s important to recognize how far organizations have come in a short time, and the critical role IT has played in the delivery of care.

* In the coming years, CIOs and other leaders will “have the ability and the bank of goodwill built up to drive innovation,” but it has to be approached the right way.

* As a leader, know that your teams are always looking to you to set the tone, which means “you have to be in touch with every level of your organization.”

* The bright side to experiencing a storm within a storm is the ability to provide a playbook for other organizations.





Q&A with Aaron Miri, Part 2 [Click here to view Part 1]

Gamble:  The ability to administer vaccines before they went bad — that really takes some quick thinking, and a willingness to shift and say, ‘okay, let’s do this.’

Miri:  That’s exactly right. And they had to go out in 5 degree temperatures with 2 inches of ice on the ground and 8 inches of snow on top of it and trek across campus to get to the dorms and administer these.

Because, as you said, the vaccines were going to go bad. We’re administering Pfizer vaccines, and they have to be stored in ultra-cold freezers. If you lose power to an area that have those freezers, it’s not like you can just put it in a fridge in someone’s dorm. It takes special equipment.

The reason why UT Austin is one of two vaccine hubs for central Texas and Travis County, is because we have these capabilities in these facilities, and we have the people. Most of our clinicians have come from other places across the country like Boston and San Francisco that have phenomenal healthcare institutions. And so we’ve created this synergy of really driving forward and helping the rest of campus to make these quick healthcare decisions.

UT Austin has always been phenomenal for research and academics and everything else. So if you add now the two worlds together,