Q&A with CIO Michael Saad, Part 2: “Technology Is Transforming Healthcare As We Know It.”

Communication is an essential part of leadership — particularly during a crisis. There’s no disputing that. But in order to have a real impact, it must go beyond merely speaking with your direct reports. It’s about empowering directors and managers to communicate with their teams. Because the reality is that, as a CIO, “there’s a limited audience” you can reach, said Michael Saad in a recent interview.

Saad, who serves as CIO at University of Tennessee Medical Center, believes that, when given the right opportunity, individuals will “step up and shine.” He’s seen it happen, especially during the past few months. In the interview, Saad talked about his team’s strategy in response to Covid-19, why data is “the new oil,” how vendor relationships have changed, and the “new normal” healthcare leaders can expect going forward.

Part 1

Part 2



* The “critical distinction” between vendor and partner

* Moving forward – “We’re cautiously optimistic.”

* Using data to monitor trends

* Disaster preparedness – “You have to have your foot in 2 different canoes.”

* “You can’t over-communicate during times like this.”

* Lessons learned from the East Coast power outage

* The “new normal” for patient care

* AI’s critical role



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Bold Statements

A vendor wants to sell you something and get their name by working with your organization. A partner works with you strategically to understand your goals and initiatives.

We’re making sure we have everything in order so that if there is a resurgence, we’re ready to handle it and won’t be caught by surprise.

If the pandemic gets worse, we’re ready to be quick and agile and shift to support that. But at the same time, we have a hospital to run; we have to focus on revenues and make sure we’re back to the sustainable volumes we can manage.

Top-down communication is important to share the vision. But it’s even more important that the next level down — the middle management layer — communicates clearly with their teams as to what the vision is, what we’re focused on, and what do we need to do today and next week.

I think access to healthcare will improve, and we’re going to see an acceleration we haven’t seen before in the use of technology in healthcare. That’s exciting.

Gamble:  When you talk about being able to run analytics, there needs to be a solid infrastructure in place. Were you able to do that, even if some of the systems don’t speak with each other?

Saad:  Absolutely. We have some very talented people who were able to extract data from different systems and put them together in a dashboard that provided a single view for everybody.

 

Gamble:  Is that going to remain a priority going forward?

Saad:  Yes. We’re looking at different tools and dashboards. We’re also reaching out to our vendors and asking them to start interacting and interfacing better with the other tools and systems we use.

 

Gamble:  It’s interesting you brought that up. We’ve heard from a few different people that their vendor management strategies have changed during the pandemic, whether that means communicating more frequently or in different ways.

Saad:  It has changed, and I will complement our vendors — I think they’ve done a great job during this pandemic. When they’ve reached out, it hasn’t been in the area of sales. They’ll contact us and say,