Q&A with CIO Andy Crowder, Part 2: “We Need to Focus on Deep Insights in a Much Broader Way.”

It takes quite a bit to entice an established CIO to pick up and move across the country. For Andy Crowder, it came in the opportunity to join Atrium Health, an organization that’s growing at a rapid, but deliberate pace, and establishing itself as a leader in innovation. In fact, due to its size and scale — particularly after merging with Wake Forest School of Medicine — Atrium has become “a living laboratory” where researchers can test ideas, and clinicians apply them in practice.

Recently, healthsystemCIO spoke with Crowder about his objectives at Atrium, the difficult balance leaders face in maintaining systems while also fostering innovation, and what has surprised him most about the 42-hospital system. He also talks about the groundbreaking work clinicians have done during the pandemic, the skillsets needed in today’s “new office,” and how he’s adjusting to life in the Tar Heel state.

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Key Takeaways:



* “It’s a difficult balance to leverage your enterprise system, stay within the purview of your contract and your governance structures, and then still innovate.”

* Through the pandemic, one of Atrium Health’s most significant achievements has been in the ability to utilize predictive analytics and machine learning to address health disparities among African American and Hispanic patients.

* For a number of clinicians and our informatics leaders, developing solutions and rolling them out so quickly during the pandemic has been “some of the most meaningful work of their careers.”

* As teams move to remote work, it’s critical for leaders to find ways to facilitate interactions and ensure team members can find ways to connect.

* The most surprising thing to Crowder about Atrium Health has been the ability to execute on strategies quickly, despite its size.





Q&A with Andy Crowder, Part 2 [Click here to view Part 1]

Gamble:  You mentioned Dr. Rasu Shrestha [Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer] — I’m sure it’s interesting working with him. Can you talk about the dynamic between the chief information officer and someone in that role?

Crowder:  It’s interesting. There’s a careful balance between not chasing all of the shiny things. Innovation done right is about choosing the right problems of consequences, or future states, or the true North that you want to go after. Rasu also brought in Todd Dunn, who was Director of Innovation at Intermountain Health. He’s been a great addition to the team.

Transformation doesn’t happen without stress, difficulties or necessary tension. But when we leverage those resources from an innovation and a partnership point of view, we can truly get to a more significant outcome. Is this a vendor, or is this a partner we’re going to go do something with? We’re going to leverage a solution, we’re going to innovate, and we’re going to make investments in that space.

The burden is you end up looking at a hundred things to pick the two or three that you’re going to do in a year. That pace can be difficult. But at the end of the year, you look back and you see that without this alignment, you’d never have the opportunity to capitalize on it. It’s a difficult balance to leverage your enterprise standards, stay within the purview of your contract and your governance structures, and still do innovation. I don’t know that anybody’s figured it out perfectly,