Sarah Richardson, CIO, NCH Healthcare System, Chapter 3

When you’re the new CIO, the first few months can be a big adjustment period, but the key, according to Sarah Richardson, is to listen. “You talk to everybody and ask a million questions and listen.” For Richardson, who joined NCH as CIO last fall, this strategy has paid off in the past, and continues to be pivotal in becoming part of the leadership team. In this interview, Richardson talks about how her experiences in the not-for-profit and corporate IT worlds helped prepare her for her current role; what she’s learned about how to build a strong team and keep staff motivated; and how to determine when it’s time to move on. She also discusses the benefits of being a fully outsourced IT shop, her team’s strong focus on population health and patient engagement, and why volunteering is so important to her.



Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3



* The right way to motivate — “How can we get to first?”

* Cooperative competition

* “You have to meet people where they are.”

* Recognizing IT’s “unsung heroes”

* Weeding out underperformers — “I took a hard-line approach.”

* Knowing when to move on

* Volunteer work — “You have to give back.”



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Bold Statements

I said, ‘Okay, if being number two’s good enough, then sure.’ That’s all I had to say. They figured out how to be number one and still get the other things done. You just have to meet people where they are.

That’s an unsung hero. Nobody in the entire hospital system is going to know or necessarily care why he was there, because it’s a backend system. It’s keeping the lights on.

You spend the first 60 to 90 days trying to figure out what your burning imperatives are; what’s really broken or what needs to be addressed right now. And you sit back and really listen. You talk to everybody and you ask a million questions and you just listen.

I remember sitting there thinking, this is awesome. This is exactly what you strive to have. But I also knew it was time to move on, because I’d done what I’d set out to do there.

It’s so rewarding to be able to say, I’m in a position that allows me to have a voice. I’m in a community that supports philanthropy. I’m in a hospital that is all about philanthropy, and here’s how I get to be a part of that — at work, at home, everywhere.

Richardson:  We created the most awesome team at Mid-America. We were last place on some of our key monthly operating report metrics. I remember I had the coolest boss at HCA. When we weren’t doing well on a metric, he would take a picture of it on his cell phone from his screen and he’d send me a text saying, ‘Awesome job on X.’ And he’d send me one of those funny faces, because he knew I’d be motivated by doing well. I remember coming into the staff meeting and saying, ‘Okay, here’s the text we just got from our boss. We’re in last place on this metric,’ and everyone was like, ‘Oh.’ And so you kind of get that pride going. And I’d say, ‘How can we get to first? At our own capacity, how do we get to number one?’

Because there were 14 divisions in HCA, and so it was very much co-opetition — cooperative competition. I said, ‘What’s everybody else doing that’s making them be so good, and what are we missing?’ And so we just literally figured out, one at time, how do we get to number one here? How do we get to number one here? And every one of my teams in a couple of areas said, ‘Is number two good enough?’ I said, ‘What do you mean?