Steve Hess, CIO, University Of Colorado Health, Chapter 1

What motivates the CIO of a large health system? For Steve Hess, it’s “picturing that day when we save someone’s life through the use of informatics.” Of course, it will take — and has already taken — a great deal of blood, sweat, and tears to get to that point, from getting five hospitals and hundreds of clinics onto an integrated EHR system, to creating standardized workflows, to turning data into “actionable clinical decision support.” In this interview, Hess talks about merger that created UCHealth three years ago, why he’s a big believer in going big bang, the “why not Epic?” philosophy that has helped increase buy-in, and how collaboration is more of an art than a science. Hess also talks about the three tiers of analytics, the “real heavy lifting” when it comes to data, and the exciting direction healthcare IT is taking.

Chapter 1



* UCHealth’s birth in 2012

* Implementing Epic & Lawson across the system

* A “high-level framework” for project management & governance

* People, process & tools

* “Why not Epic?”

* Customization vs. configuration — “Be collaborative, but get to the decision.”



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Bold Statements

I had a framework, a way to actually manage the project to success, but I also wanted to make sure that I understood the culture and who the influencers were, and make sure I build those relationships with those folks.

I’m a big believer in always looking at people, process and tools. Often the IT systems are just the tools, and we really have to make sure that the people are ready and the processes are ready to actually take advantage of the new tools.

We set up the governance structures to be very collaborative and inclusive of clinicians, leaders, and frontline staff, but we set it up so that we could get to decisions quickly and efficiently.

We don’t avoid configuration; we actually encourage configuration to make sure that it works well for the individual departments. It’s the customization where we’re going very different from the standard system that we really tried to avoid.

About two weeks before go-live, every single decision that you make is second-guessed. ‘I can’t believe we made that decision, that’s not going to work for us,’ so having the decision tracker allows you to go back in there and say, ‘That’s why we made the decision.’

Gamble:  Hi Steve, thank you so much for taking some time to speak with us today.

Hess:  Sure thing.

Gamble:  To give our readers and listeners some information, can you provide an overview of UCHealth — what you have in terms of number of hospitals and maybe a little bit of your history?

Hess:  Absolutely. UC Health is actually a fairly new health system that came about in 2012. It was really a consolidation of three fairly large health systems in Colorado. Universal of Colorado Hospital, which is essentially a standalone academic medical center, formed a new system called University of Colorado Health — the short name is UCHealth — with Poudre Valley Health System, which is two hospitals in Northern Colorado, and then Memorial Health System, which includes two hospitals in Colorado Springs. Almost overnight, three systems with about 500 beds apiece came together to create UC Health, and that’s what we are today. We’re five hospitals, about 1,600 beds in total, a little over 15,000 employees, 104,000 admissions, 2.8 million clinical visits, and a net revenue of about 2.8 billion.

Again, it was formed in January 2012, so a little over three and a half years old. We’re a new health system; a very good health system. Three of the hospitals are magnet hospitals and we obtain really good quality scores and good financial success, so a new system but a great foundation to grow upon.