Q&A with CIO William Walders, Part 1: “Healthcare is becoming a more digital-centric environment.”

There are few things more daunting than dealing with a natural disaster; especially when you’re new to the organization, and the storm headed your way is a category 5 hurricane. It’s the type of news that would send any leader into a panic — unless the individual in question has quite a bit of experience with disasters. Like, say, being in a submarine during a tsunami. Or providing relief after a devastating earthquake. Or, perhaps most terrifying, having to testify before Congress.

Once you’ve weathered those types of storms — as William Walders has — it’s hard to be rattled. And so when Hurricane Dorian threatened the Florida coast (and ended up veering in another direction), he was ready. And Health First, which impressed him with its high level of disaster preparedness, was ready to focus on building a framework to enable better care, and a better overall experience.

Recently, healthsystemCIO spoke with Walders about his team’s core objectives, why effective communication is the basis for pretty much everything, his approach to professional development, and how his military career prepared him for the CIO role.

Chapter 1



* Health First’s 4-hospital system

* Joint venture with AdventHealth

* Dealing with Hurricane Dorian – “I was ridiculously impressed.”

* IT representation in the command center

* Working w/ CEO Steve Johnson – “He’s big on digital culture.”

* The Amazon/Uber/Starbucks experience

* Privia/athenahealth EHR’s “seamless go-live”

* Interview questions: “I asked the board & leadership a lot of questions.”



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Bold Statements

One of the first things I did when I got here was to sit down with the six-inch binder we have, which feels more like a phonebook. But I went through it and immediately saw that there was a lot of rigor and a lot of processes in place.

We have tools in place that provide us with a network monitoring perspective, and let us know long before our peers in facilities and clinical engineering when things are down.

Now we have a road map as to how we’re going to enable consumers to drive their own healthcare, to improve access, and to provide ease and convenience for our customer.

We were all in awe that there weren’t any major issues. Nothing failed. No one hinted that they wanted to go back to the legacy EHR. It was incredibly seamless, and that’s a testament to the preparation of our vendor partners, the staff, and most notably, the providers.

Gamble:  Let’s start with an overview of Health First: number of hospitals, what you have in the way of clinics, and where you’re located.

Walders:  Health First is a $2 billion integrated delivery network. We’re a not-for-profit system with four hospitals and around 900 beds. We have four existing lines of business: outpatient wellness services, hospital services, a medical group, and our own health insurance plans, which has about 164,000 members. There’s a lot of changes and a lot of growth happening. It’s a really exciting time to be at Health First.

 

Gamble:  And you’re located in central Florida?

Walders:  Yes, we’re predominantly in Brevard County, which is located along the coast, about 45 minutes west of Orlando. We’ve recently entered some partnerships that are going to help us grow across the state, but right now that area is our focus.

 

Gamble:  And you’re independent, correct?

Walders:  We are locally owned, yes. We recently entered a joint venture in which AdventHealth purchased a minority share of our organization. Our board has made a commitment to remain locally owned, and so there’s no option to buy Health First wholly, or even to buy a majority share.