Q&A with CIO Danny Scott, Part 1: “Our Job Is to Enable. That’s What IS Does.”

Danny Scott considers himself to be ‘a cheerleader by nature.’ Perhaps that’s why he wasn’t fazed by the idea of taking on an IS leadership role just weeks before a scheduled Epic go-live. And it wasn’t a simple conversation; Good Samaritan was migrating from an in-house EHR to a hosted Epic model. The staff, understandably, were “shell-shocked,” but Scott saw it as an opportunity to create a better environment.

Three years later, the IS department at Good Sam is barely recognizable. Not only are service and ticket management processes in place, but now, thanks to an enormous effort, IT is viewed as a “true partner.”

Recently, healthsystemCIO spoke with Scott how he was able to develop a strategic plan, the change in thinking that was sorely needed among IS staff, and the importance of communicating and assessing needs when creating a strategic plan. He also talks about why he’s “excited, but anxious” about the future of healthcare, the skills he believes are most valuable, and how his background has helped shape him as a leader.

Chapter 1



* About Good Samaritan

* Entering a “frazzled” IT environment

* Individual staff meetings – “I got a lot of great feedback from that.”

* Small organizations thinking big

* “You can be a world-class organization even if you don’t have a $50 capital budget.”

* 5-year strategic plan

* Installing a ticketing system to “manage the chaos”

* “Our job in IT is to enable our constituency to do their jobs better.”



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Bold Statements

There was no strategic plan. There was no, ‘where are we going?’ People would come in and do what they had to do for today, but there was no real vision as to where we were going as an organization. That’s something I’ve been able to implement.

IT was really looked at as a side entity; we were just there. They could call on us when they needed to, but they didn’t see us as having any value. And so a big part of my job has been to do a lot of marketing and show people the value we bring.

If you say, ‘go,’ what’s going to happen? Some people will go forward, some will go backwards, some will go left, and some will go right. They’re going to bump into each other and knock each other over. That leads to chaos.

The challenge to my team is, do we want to stay with the same model that IT has had for years of having a data center and doing that type of work, or do we want to be a technology solution provider?

Gamble:  Thank you, Danny, so much for taking some time to speak with us today.  We appreciate it.

Danny:  I’m glad to be here.

 

Gamble:  Let’s start with some information about Good Samaritan — number of beds, where you’re located, things like that.

Danny:  Good Samaritan is an independent hospital located in Southwest Indiana, right on the border with Illinois. We’re about 100 beds, and we have a convenient care clinic. We’ve just started up an FQHC. We have behavioral health — all of the specialties you might expect. We have about 1,900 employees. We service 10 counties, the majority of which are in Indiana, with a few in Illinois as well.

 

Gamble:  Do you have any affiliations or partnerships?

Danny:  We have a community connect model with our EHR system, which we can talk about more. But that’s the only major partnership we have.

 

Gamble:  And you’ve been with the organization for about three years?

Danny:  Yes, about three and a half. I started in May of 2016.

 

Gamble:  I’d like to talk about what the IT environment looked like when you arrived, and what happened from there.

Danny:  I would say that I really flipped things upside down. When I walked in the door,