Q&A with Tony Ambrozie, Part 2: “We Need to Put Consumers and Patients at the Center.”

For many leaders, transitioning to a new organization — and a completely different industry — during a pandemic might not seem like a logical move. But for Tony Ambrozie, coming to healthcare was a no brainer.

“This is a place where a lot of transformation will happen, and a lot of it will be around technology, digital, and machine learning, which is what I’ve been doing,” he said during a podcast interview. And it will happen “in a relatively short period of time.”

Recently, Ambrozie spoke with healthsystemCIO about the enormous opportunity as Baptist Health South Florida’s first Chief Digital and Information Officer, and how he hopes to leverage the experience he has gained working for organizations like American Express and, most recently, Disney. He also talked about why 5-year plans are becoming a thing of the past, what he has learned from Elon Musk, and what he believes are the biggest challenges in healthcare.

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Key Takeaways



* An increasing number of health systems are recruiting digital leaders from other industries, largely because they’re looking for a “digital mindset that is intensely consumer-focused and intensely agile.”

* A key mistake organizations make with digital health adoption is spending too much time “trying to perfect things from the beginning,” which often leads to poor results.

* The three biggest factors in healthcare’s struggle with digital transformation are misaligned financial incentives, technology that is often old and inflexible, and a failure to put patients at the center of their care.

* The reason why the digital experience doesn’t seem very fluid? “Most folks are trying to mesh different systems and different products together in a way that probably we wouldn’t do elsewhere.”

* Coming into a brand new position can be intimidating, but “there’s a certain advantage of being able to shape the role and the expectations.”





Q&A with Tony Ambrozie, Part 2 [Click here for Part 1]

Gamble:  I think one reason why we’re starting to see more people like you come in from other industries is that agility just hasn’t been there. Do you think that’s one of the advantages do you bring coming from outside of healthcare?

Ambrozie:  Probably. There are areas where you want to try and fail and learn and try again and succeed; and there are others, like providing healthcare or flying planes, where you don’t really want to experiment as you go. But in terms of digital experience, as long as we don’t send our consumers into the wrong place and the wrong thing happens to them, you can iterate and you can do it pretty fast. I’m seeing a lot of different provider systems across the country looking for folks such as myself with backgrounds in consumer-focused industries. I believe the drive is that digital mindset that is intensely consumer-focused, intensely iterative, and intensely agile. Rather than spend a lot of time trying to perfect things from the beginning, which is not possible, let’s start sooner and see how it goes. And as long as we learn fast, learn from our mistakes, and correct them fast, we can do that.

 

Gamble:  You mentioned that one of the keys to transitioning to a different industry is to really immerse yourself. How did you do that in the healthcare space, and what were some things that surprised you?

Ambrozie:  That’s a great question.