Q&A with Doylestown Health CIO Chris Myers: The ‘Secret Sauce’ for Leaders and Lessons Learned as a Marine

Around five years ago, it became very clear to leadership at Doylestown Health that being able to provide top patient care and compete with other health systems in the Philadelphia area meant it was time for some changes. One of those was promoting Chris Myers to the role of CTO — and later CIO, recognizing that “it’s not an IT director’s world anymore,” he said. Today, organizations need “someone who crosses over different disciplines” and can “look out for clinicians and ask tough questions.”

Recently, Myers spoke with Kate Gamble, Managing Editor and Director of Social Media, about how his diverse career experience — which included time spent with a law firm, as well as an Intelligence Specialist with the U.S. Marines — helped prepare him to lead his teams through the frenzied early days of Covid-19 and adjust to the post-pandemic world. He also shared thoughts on the unique challenges facing security leaders, the importance of “soft skills” and professional development, and why industry experience is not a requirement when hiring and promoting individuals.

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Key Takeaways



* On the CTO’s scope: The role of the CTO has evolved beyond “building servers and upgrades and keeping technology available and redundant” to one more focused on guiding decisions, ensuring clinicians’ needs are met, and “asking tough questions.”

* On surviving Covid: “We were doing things we had never done before, knowing that the emergency department had to do something quick and all the teams and all the departments that had to support them. And so, we got together and came up with solutions time and time again.”

* On the CIO’s purpose: “It was translating why we had to hurry up and get those drive-thrus and the tents going,” while also completing tasks like integrating with state data to track patients. “I had to redirect and explain why we weren’t doing things that way, and that other things had to become more of a high priority.”

* On learning from his military experience: “You have to adjust your strategy constantly; the enemy reacts, and you adjust. That’s what the Marines are best at. In doing that constant strategy change and adaptability, I was right back to my Marine days.”

* On valuing outside experience: “I’m not always looking for the person that definitely came from a hospital. If I see that growth; that willingness to make difficult choices or to take on challenges, then I like that person.”





Q&A with Chris Myers, CIO, Doylestown Health

Gamble:  Hi Chris, thanks so much for your time. For some background, you’ve been with the organization for a little while, but recently took on the CIO role. How long have you been with Doylestown Health?

Myers:  Since 2017.

 

Gamble:  And you went from CTO to CIO — it’s definitely a logical progression. Can you talk about how you made that transition?

Myers:  I started as IT director, which is something I had done for years at other jobs. But 2017 was a different world. We were worried about security, doing digital transformation, upgrades — there was a natural progression. The cloud was big and more people were getting involved. All of that normalcy stopped with Covid.

Right before Covid, because of changes in virtualization and third-party usage, a lot of departments didn’t buy servers in a big installation of an application or a system. It’s ‘we’re going to buy this, it’s in the cloud.’ You need somebody to be sitting there with the department head or a very good clinical person to think of all the questions that they’re not go...