The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) celebrated its 30th anniversary at this year’s annual Fall Forum, held November 7 – November 10 in San Antonio, Texas. CHIME’s Fall Forum provides an opportunity for Chief Information Officers, senior healthcare IT leaders, and industry partners to collaborate, exchange ideas, and develop professionally. With CEO Ed Marx and COO Shane Danaher supporting the pre-conference CHIME Innovation in Clinical Informatics Program, the rest of Divurgent’s attending team – Steve Weichhand, Christopher Kunney, Liz Keller, Andrew Wells, Joe Grinstead, Hannah Ellerbee, and Sarah Brandt – arrived ready to meet with friends and make new industry connections. With sessions and panels dedicated to digital health strategies, innovative care models, and the evolution of healthcare IT leadership roles, Divurgent jumped right into the mix with Hannah and Sarah leading a focus group on Accelerating Digital Transformation with a Design-Centered IT Organization. And as a team in support of “work hard, play hard,” Divurgent rounded out the evenings with an “Ed Marx the Spot” and Top Golf events where attendees could meet and discuss the topics heard throughout the day, current healthcare challenges, and connect on a personal level.
Fostering Digital Transformation
With an opening keynote featuring Sophia, the world’s first humanoid celebrity created by Hanson Robotics, attendees got a glimpse of AI’s future in healthcare and were likely left with a sense that we still have a ways to go before advanced human-like robots are actively assisting in real-life healthcare settings. But it was the first session that shed light on the need for healthcare IT leaders to approach digital transformation with a people-first lens with an emphasis on patients, clinicians, and employees to better foster an ecosystem that’s focused on adoption of digital technologies. Enabling and strengthening culture, processes, and governance capable of supporting inputs from across the organization were critical to creating agile structures that foster enterprise-wide transformation efforts. Commonly, orienting teams around experience was a key lever to guide collaboration and identification of initiatives that drive the most value for healthcare organizations.
All these things sounded decidedly “non-tech” but yet highlighted the pressure on CIOs and senior IT leaders to drive digital agendas, pave a path toward innovation, and bring along the rest of the organization while navigating complex projects – often with limited budget and alongside staffing challenges. This topic was highlighted in several sessions and discussions around the role of the healthcare CIO and its partnership with marketing, clinical, operations, and data leaders.
The Digital Transformation Buzzword and Focus Group Insights
Divurgent’s focus group included a diverse and engaged group of attendees from the U.S. and U.K. who were eager to hear about one another’s biggest digital successes over the past 12 months. Throughout the discussion, Hannah and Sarah shared how these highlighted initiatives included focus on human-centered design, person-enabled health, interoperability, governance, and analytics. Participants emphasized the aspects of their organizational culture that were more broadly supporting digital initiatives, including strong partnerships among IT, Operations, and Clinical stakeholders. The group talked of how the implementation of new workflows and digital tools, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, had accelerated some aspects of their digital and innovation portfolios while also presenting new challenges needing to be accounted for in ongoing strategies – e.g., rationalization of tools added to support the needs of the pandemic and opportunities to build on lessons learned. At the same time, the candor of some members who communicated their ongoing efforts to overcome technical debt and remaining in early stages of EMR implementation was also appreciated.
With all the focus on specific digital transformation efforts in the CHIME Fall Forum panels, the group jumped into what digital transformation is not. Collectively, the group weighed in on the buzzword that digital transformation has become and how to decipher what their board, peers, and staff mean when they use the term. In some instances, the term has become synonymous with creating access for patients while in others it’s about driving adoption of digital tools while improving workflows to streamline activities that have been made easier with technology. The group remarked that they did not feel their jobs had ever not been digital and that the increasing focus on digital has become more about bringing the rest of the organization along on the journey. Evident from the conversation and success stories, the pace of transformation continues to quicken, requiring healthcare IT leaders to work faster, engage multidisciplinary teams, and consider how the moving pieces align with their digital strategies and enterprise goals.
That’s a Wrap!
More than just sessions, CHIME offered a variety of activities for participants to catch up with friends and network with new connections. PaintFest offered the chance to create colorful artwork donated to the Multi-Assistance Center at Morgan’s Wonderland while a 5K, spin class, and closing reception at Knibbe Ranch all offered a change of pace from the standard conference activities. What’s unique about healthcare organizations is the commitment to collaborate, discuss, and tackle challenging problems, and this was apparent in the engaging conversations at Fall Forum. While colleagues shared their challenges and failures, others offered potential frameworks and solutions.
At Divurgent, we heard the need for continued support in building tailored digital strategies and roadmaps for healthcare organizations that allow them to build on to existing IT foundations, fully leverage tools that they have, and keep the patient at the center of the digital journey. We shared our perspectives on how to instill focus in the digital agenda while advancing the pace at which the IT and supporting organizations operate to advance consumer-centric solutions. For those just now digesting all that Fall Forum had to offer, or those who couldn’t make it in person, we welcome the opportunity to share more about how Divurgent can help you design and accelerate digital healthcare experiences.
Accelerate your organization’s digital efforts – connect with us today!
About the Author
Sarah Brandt | Associate Principal
Sarah Brandt is a digital transformation leader with over 14 years of experience partnering with organizations to rethink their approaches to consumer and employee experience. She has partnered with integrated health systems, data analytics and digital technology providers, and clients to structure and execute strategic initiatives that drive measurable improvement in health, well-being, and business outcomes. She is passionate about helping cross-functional teams standardize and scale operations using data, technology, human capital, automation, and process re-engineering. To learn more about Sarah, visit her on LinkedIn.
