Q&A with Fisher-Titus CIO Linda Stevenson: “Every Conversation, Every Project Starts with Why.”

For Linda Stevenson, being a yoga teacher isn’t just a hobby; it makes her a better CIO. “It allows me to be more purposeful, more thoughtful about how I work with my team.” In addition to offering a monthly yoga class for the staff, she has incorporated meditation and breath work into her leadership strategy as tools to help work through challenges.

Since she started as CIO at Fisher-Titus Health in February of 2019, Stevenson has leveraged her passion for wellness to bring “positive energy” to the role — and after a few years of hard work (including rebuilding the infrastructure), it paid off. For two years in a row, Fisher-Titus has earned Most Wired recognition for both the acute and ambulatory settings, which is a testament to the hard work the team has put forward. “It’s nice to be able to say, ‘here’s where you were and here’s how far we’ve come,” she said.

Recently, Stevenson spoke with Kate Gamble, Managing Editor at healthsystemCIO, about the progress the organization has made in recent years, how she works to keep IT connected to the overall mission, the “cybersecurity by committee” approach that Fisher-Titus has adopted, and the burden faced by CIOs of rural health organizations.

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Key Takeaways



* On connecting IT to the overall mission: “For me, it’s very easy. Every conversation, every project starts with why. Why are we doing this project? How does this make a difference for our patients or our people?”

* On the need for continuous training: “There are people who get into bad habits, whether it be telehealth or bedside documentation where they’re slipping the paper into their pocket to do it later. Educating them as to the why is important. We still have to have those conversations. We have to keep going back to the basics.”

* On cybersecurity by committee: “We meet on a weekly basis to review outstanding risks, to review any assessments that are done, to talk about penetration tests, and to plan for tabletop drills. Everybody has a little piece of the pie.”

* On rural health: “Something has to change because we all as rural healthcare organizations will not survive. Everybody has to really look at what’s the bottom line, what does our budget look like, where does the money need to be spent, and where can we cut back in order to survive the shifts in our economy.”

* On dealing with AI hype: “Vendors can go to any one of the leaders in organizations and say they can solve all of your problems with this automated thing, and it’s our job to then give a sense of reality to all those conversations… let’s really talk about where we’re going to invest our money.”



 

Q&A with Linda Stevenson, CIO, Fisher-Titus

Gamble:  Hi Stevenson, thank you so much for doing this. The last time I interviewed you was in 2019, which feels like it was the last century.

Stevenson:  Like a lifetime ago, right. A lot has changed since then.

 

Gamble:  I’d like to talk about some of the things that your team is working on and get into your leadership strategy. Let’s start with a high-level overview of Fisher-Titus — what you have in terms of hospitals and some of the other facilities and where you’re located, things like that.

Stevenson:  Sure. Fisher-Titus is a rural healthcare organization located in northwest Ohio. We have a hospital with around 100 beds. We also have a skilled nursing facility, a nursing home, and our own EMS group. We have many employed physician organizations and providers out in the community.