Q&A with Kristin Myers, Part 1: “There’s a whole discipline around change management.”

“It’s all about change management.”

We’ve all heard the phrase — or at least, something to that affect — before, but what we don’t always hear is how. How can leaders provide their teams with the assurance they need when the future seems uncertain?

According to Kristin Myers, Senior VP of IT at Mount Sinai Health System, it starts with a healthy dose of transparency. The leader’s role, she believes, is to “articulate the vision” by providing a roadmap of where the organization is going, and explaining how they fit into the plan. The key is to help individuals and teams understand that “they’re part of the change,” she said in a recent interview.

Myers comes from experience, having helped guide Mount Sinai through a massive merger with Continuum Health Partners back in 2013. During our discussion, she talked about what the experience taught her, and the organization’s goal to move to a single platform. Myers also discusses the keys to gaining operational buy-in, the qualities she values most in team members, how innovation is being used as a recruiting tool, and how the industry can start to achieve parity in leadership roles.

Chapter 1



* About Mount Sinai

* Keys to success w/ Epic: Executive sponsorship

* “We’ve really had a deep commitment from our leadership, physicians and nurses.”

* More clinical transformation, less IT implementation

* Implementation hurdles

* Standardizing, to a point – “We always take variances into account.”

* System-wide clinical command center

* Getting feedback from all levels: “It’s extremely helpful to me as a leader.”



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Bold Statements

We don’t consider our Epic implementations to be IT implementations. It’s a clinical transformation.

There is a whole discipline around change management and really understanding the human factors in an implementation — what it takes for physicians and nurses to make the switch from one system to another — and being able to address those needs.

It’s important to make sure they feel recognized in the efforts they’ve given, because change is very hard. And actually, I think it is not focused on enough as part of these major transitions.

We’ve developed dashboards and data to really support the system huddle. It’s a tremendous opportunity to learn from each other and to make data-based decisions across the health system.

Being able to hear their challenges, whether they’re having telephony issues, desktop issues or Epic issues, is tremendously helpful to me as a leader.

Gamble:  Let’s start with an overview of Mount Sinai Health System. I know you’re really a pretty large system, but just some general information about the number of hospitals, some of the ambulatory offerings, things like that.

Myers:  Mount Sinai Health System is in New York City and we have seven hospitals: five in Manhattan, one in Queens, and one in Brooklyn. We also have a very large ambulatory footprint. We have around four million visits per year, and we cover every specialty you can think of — not just Manhattan but in all of the boroughs of New York. In terms of our patient population, I would say the majority of are Medicare and Medicaid, and then we have a mix of self-pay and commercial.

 

Gamble:  And of course, being in New York City, it’s a pretty competitive area as far as healthcare.

Myers:  Absolutely. One of the biggest challenges we have is around talent management — not just in healthcare IT, but we’re also competing with financial firms and other technology companies for the same resources.

 

Gamble:  Sure. Now, in terms of the clinical application environment, are you using Epic? And is that in all of the hospitals?