Q&A with CIO Will Walders, Part 2: “You Have to Get Your Technical Debt in Order.”

Will Walders believes one of the most important things an organization can do, especially now, is to become “brilliant at the basics.” At its core, it means making sure clinical systems are functioning properly and users can access their email without issues. In doing so, teams can create “an excellent foundation” to accomplish the more complex tasks.

This philosophy has served him well at Health First, where Walders has served as CIO since June of 2019. Since that time, the organization has cut $16 million in waste and significantly reduced the number of applications in use, and he doesn’t plan to stop there.

Recently, Walders spoke with Kate Gamble, Managing Editor at healthsystemCIO, about how his team is leveraging visibility and shared accountability to decrease legacy debt; the “holistic, predictive approach” he has taken to IT business management; and why capturing “low value work” is so critical. He also talked about how they’re working with partners like RelayOne to create a “frictionless experience” and what he believes healthcare can learn from the Domino’s Pizza Tracker.

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Key Takeaways



* By adopting a “holistic, predictive approach to what IT services management looks like,” Health First is able to see determine the IT spend on a broad level, while examining things like service tickets at a tactical level.

* For IT departments, retiring legacy systems — especially those that are no longer fully supported — is a victory that should be celebrated.

* When a team is “brilliant at the basics,” it doesn’t get noticed when email works and clinical systems are functioning. It gets noticed “when that happens the same way over and over again, and they pick their head up and realize they haven’t had an issue.”

* One way to increase efficiency in the perioperative space? With “a frictionless PHI-less solution that allows you to see the entire environment with a simple click.”

* “We don’t need heroes; we need normal people doing normal things well all day, every day. If everybody just did their job all day every day, we would be great.





Q&A with CIO Will Walders, Part 2 [Click here to view Part 1]

Gamble:  And IT service management falls under your purview as well, right?

Walders:  It does, yes.

 

30,000-foot view of IT

Gamble:  That’s another area where I’m sure you found a lot of room for improvement.

Walders:  Yes. There’s a lot of range as you look at the maturity of IT business management, from true incident management to problem management to taking a holistic, predictive approach to what IT service management looks like.

I feel like I’ve gone through this journey everywhere I’ve been. At Health First, were 2.5 years into understanding all the services we provide and what they cost, and adding time required maintain with service level agreements. It’s establishing the administrative baseline for IT service management and finding an audit proof way to communicate that back to stakeholders.

Our clinics aren’t terribly different. They were roughly at the same level of productivity; being able to show that one consumes more IT resources than another is a powerful statement, particularly if one is more or less productive than others. You can start to take a holistic approach — a 30,000-foot view of where the IT spend is and why,