Q&A with CIO Chris Belmont, Part 2: “Sometimes You Have to Be the Facilitator.”

For Chris Belmont, taking on a new role during a crisis is nothing new — nor is starting a new role when large initiatives are looming. And so, when he took the helm at Memorial Hospital at Gulfport during the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, he had an idea of what to expect. But as someone with decades of industry experience, Belmont was careful to avoid the trap of jumping to conclusions. Instead, he put extra effort into “learning and listening, and evaluating where we are.”

Recently, the healthcare IT veteran spoke with healthsystemCIO about what he hopes to achieve at Memorial — based on what the organization truly needs, where he believes key opportunities exist, and how he hopes to change the thinking from a systems approach to a System approach. He also talks about what brought him back to the hospital environment after a 4-year hiatus, how Covid-19 has changed our thinking, and the critical role CIOs play in forcing teams to “back up and think long-term.”

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Key Takeaways



* A key objective for any CIO? To shift away from being a supplier of technology, and toward becoming a service provider.

* It’s not about adding more tools or solutions to the mix, but rather, focusing on “leveraging what we have,” and making sure they integrate with other technologies.

* One of the key mistakes organizations can make is to utilize a solution – like, for example, API, solely as a time and attendance vendor, “and not as a provider of good data to manage our workforce.”

* During a crisis situation, it’s natural to think in the moment; the CIO’s role is to encourage teams to “step back and think bigger.”

* When leaders are able to get people in a room and start conversations, “good things happen.” But it doesn’t happen without a facilitator.





Q&A with Chris Belmont, Part 2 [Click here for part 1]

Gamble:  What were some of your initial priorities when you stepped into the role? What did you want to focus on first?

Belmont:  Again, I think it’s moving away from being a supplier of technology and into being an asset to the organization and focusing on how we can provide more services. We had a physician liaison program to help with adoption, but it was more about onboarding and initial training, and not really about optimization and how we can make their practice better. It’s understanding where we can enhance some of the system functionality — for example, building a stronger telemedicine service offering, taking the portfolio we have and really leveraging it.

We have both Health Catalyst and EPSi for our analytical platforms, but we’re using it for individual point solutions; we really aren’t using it as an enterprise solution. It’s looking at growing the use of those and thinking about how to provide data services for the whole organizations, things like that.

It’s also about how we function more as a system with a capital ‘S’ — on Memorial as a health system. We have a hundred different sites with numerous physicians, quite a few nurse practitioners, and a lot of community physicians. It’ll be interesting to see how this dynamic unfolds, but we own three nursing homes as well. That’s a different type of business operation — but at the same time, it’s not. They’re basically tenants, and not patients, but there’s no reason why we can’t treat them with the same level of wellness and care as we would the rest of our community. So that’s an interesting dynamic.

 

Gamble:  It is. You talked about not getting caught up with a particular product or vendor and its ca...