Today in health, it interviews from the chime

conference in San Diego.

My name is bill Russell.

I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of this week in health.

It a channel dedicated to keeping health it staff current and engaged.

Just a quick reminder.

I wouldn't be dropping interviews over the next couple of days and into

next week from the chime conference.

And then I'm going to have some more interviews from the next conference I

want to be going to, and then eventually I'll get back to Florida and to the studio

where we'll start looking at the news.

Once again.

Hope you enjoy this interview.

All right.

We're at the, uh, chime conference in San Diego.

We're doing another interview from the floor.

We have done a Roche.

Who is the CIO for university of Utah health.

Yes.

It's great to see you again.

Thanks.

We actually ran into each other at, uh, at BJC.

So you used to be at BJC,

BJC and worst in university.

Well, what'd you do there?

I was the vice president over epic.

So one instance of epic over two different tax ID companies.

Very interesting

two different tax ID company.

That's an interesting dynamic.

I was going to say over epic at any academic medical center is a,

it is, it is different competing priorities.

Definitely go on and you have to balance a lot of different, um, personalities.

You have a lot of different losses.

And do you have that, that disarming smile, like that's secure

area.

Let's, let's run that through governance.

Let's see how that goes.

And governance is really important

in a place like that.

It is, it is definitely an academics.

That's one thing that has surprised me is how much is committee run.

And I love something that, uh, Charro Goswami up at UWS said it's.

It's not committee.

You want to workshop, then you want to work.

Like I'm going to use that.

That was a really good way to think about

it.

So you're now CIO university, a university of Utah

hospital and clinics, uh, academic

medical center, I assume.

Yes.

Um, headquartered in salt lake salt lake city.

Okay.

But you have a

larger area than that?

Yes, we are a five state contenary referrals.

To the university of Utah, we are the only academic facility

and that five state area.

And you're between you and Intermountain

probably have what 90% market

share and, um, HCA Stewart, we're kind of those three

are the big players in music.

That's what we

find in most major metros is you have three players and a lot of

times it's not, you know, an even split.

They're at scale.

Yeah.

And you know, where are the academics?

So we, and we're

state.

And so you have to work with everybody or you the children's hospital as well, or

so the children's hospital is a, um, relationship with Intermountain.

It is, um, their facility, their EHR, but our physicians.

Okay.

That's interesting.

As much as I'd like to explore that, I'm not sure my audience would be really

excited about that, but I, but I do want to talk about like, what's top of mind,

what are you thinking about these things?

Um, a lot is digital roadmap.

So when I got there, I was asked to create, actually take what

they had in terms of digital.

Before we go there.

When did you get there?

Year ago?

October 5th was my

anniversary.

So you were, you were what?

Six to seven months into COVID at that point.

And really they wanted to focus on digital at that point.

So you really had responded to the pandemic.

You had some things in place we're ready

to go.

And they were like any academic or any hospital.

We went from zero to close to, I think 40,000, um, telehealth visits.

It just, um, the curve that we experienced now we've settled

off we're about 20,000 a month.

Um, and inpatient, uh, ambulatory visits have picked back up.

So what we're seeing in tele-health is just an add on to

our in-person ambulatory visits.

Oh,

interesting.

All right.

So digital, you come in in October and they're like, all right,

we have this digital roadmap.

I'm putting words in their mouth.

We now recognize how important digital is, especially in the age of the

pandemic is we need to reach people in a lot of different, different

ways that we used to have four.

So what, what did it look like to sort of, I assume you picked something

up that was already existing.

How do you, where do you start to ideate?

Do you go back into the organization?

Do you bring it outside people to look

at it?

I mean, actually it was kind of funny.

I probably week one, I got there and they said, we have this digital strategy.

We want you to run.

And partner with the CMIO who is great, absolutely wonderful Dr.

Hightower.

And I said, well, tell me digital strategy.

You have something, tell me what that is.

And they're like, well, it's our virtual tele-health program.

I said, you do, you do know it's more than that.

Like, we want to grow that bigger than just that one space.

So they suddenly they're like, well, yeah, yeah.

Cool.

Yeah.

Do that.

Go ahead.

Get that done.

Um, my, uh, doctor, hi Tara and I work together.

We actually did a couple of things right up front.

We brought in, um, impacted by users to help us with the initial, how do

we start to assess the environment?

Where are we?

What does governance start to look like?

How do we create the charter?

So in that first year, we pulled together a charter.

We pulled together, uh, what we call our digital enablement committee.

We looked at early on what should be on our road.

So we have like three key things on our roadmap, but we also went back

Goode.

Who's the head of the medical school and kind of my boss's boss.

And he had a directed steps.

So every year there's a group of directed steps.

So we went and looked at all.

We talked to, we've looked at that.

We said there's about 30 digitally enabled strategies in there.

We've talked to each of those.

And then we have, are starting to now put that back on the roadmap, using

our deck committee to help in the prioritization of where those should fit.

It's Intermountain is a, a strong digital.

Yes.

They're also operating at margins that cause I go to the JP Morgan conference,

they report out their margins and I, I look at those and I go, they have

to be the envy of just about every health system across the country.

So they have a fair amount of money to spend there.

Is there any sort of looking out of the corner of your eye going, what are

they doing over there or do you just try to focus in on that your specific

communities?

It's good to know what they're doing.

Um, Ryan and I.

Who's the CIO, we partner quite a bit and we're, we are, I don't see them as a

competitor, especially in the it space.

I think we have to partner and we have to be coming to the community and to

different vendors in the same way.

And so we're doing that partnership together,

sort of that expectation in the community.

If I thought, if I lived in salt lake, I would expect that the university

and inner mountain would work for.

Absolutely.

Th the neat thing is I think I could see you and Ryan working together.

I mean, you're two very reasonable people, very smart and have

probably really good teams.

I haven't met your teams, but I've interviewed some of Ryan's

teams over the year years.

They're really some of the top people in the industry on this stuff, you

could probably get a lot done just at

that level, I would think.

Yeah, just take one space.

We so at and T with the FirstNet rollout of, you know, the first responder network,

it's much easier for us to go together and talk to FirstNet and at, and T as a group,

rather than me going and him going now, he's got a lot more power and probably.

Get them to move on it, but us together and then showing the legislature

that we're working together is

what about like vaccination programs that, that

came at probably a little, well, no, that would have come right after you

got there.

Yeah.

So vaccine and the state of Utah was kind of interesting.

It was managed by the department of health within Utah.

It wasn't necessarily managed by the academics, so they would,

the state would give us back.

Yeah.

And we had to show, especially for us, we had to show 85% vaccination rate

before they would give us more vaccine.

So we actually didn't necessarily vaccinate the largest percentage.

The largest percentage of vaccinations came from the state.

It's interesting because my vaccination was a drive through a park

and it was paramedics, but essentially the, the card was filled out by the state

health department.

Yeah, the beauty of it.

When people were having it done at Utah health, if you had a, my chart record,

it automatically it's populated in.

And, and you know, some of those that was a clear pass and everything now

that's all kind of being integrated.

It's

nice.

Yeah.

I mean, I could pull up my phone right now and show you my vaccination on clear pass.

Cause I went to the health conference and it was required and it's interesting.

The next conference I go to they're like, Hey, bring your card.

I'm like, I don't, I brought my card.

I don't want to keep bringing my card.

Cause that cards kind of.

Yeah, it'll wear

down.

And I w I w wanted to know if I can just show you this on my phone and

they're like, we'd rather see your card.

And I'm like, that is such a healthcare thing to say.

I'd rather see your card.

Yeah.

Um, have you seen things progress?

Um, you know, we started using chat bots.

We started doing, uh, you know, telehealth.

There's a new, what we started to maybe integrate it in different ways and stuff.

Have you started, what are some of the things that maybe you started during

the pandemic that you think will.

No, I think definitely what the vaccine process us looking

at, how well we did, especially in the equity piece of it was really telltale.

We did a great job for the Caucasian population, but when you looked at

Hispanics, African-Americans native Indians, we didn't do such a good job.

And the beauty of the university of Utah is that they're willing to

look at it and say, we need to do.

And be more equitable and so really put some programs in place.

So they're buried when it comes to data.

They're very transparent.

You could go out there now and look at some of the data points that I'm

talking about and it's out there and it really is open to the public to

kind of see who, you know, how well we

do.

Yeah.

We say salt lake, but I mean, Utah salt lake Provo, and a bunch of

really neat towns, but their towns.

A lot of space in between those are you servicing

those areas?

Yeah, we do.

We are pretty much that pretty much that entire state of Utah.

And then a lot of those five state regions that don't have academic facilities.

We have a fairly, um, extensive connect program where we send physicians out to

other smaller regional hospitals to help with kind of connecting or doing programs.

We also have a really pretty cool program.

So Encore or corner, forget the name.

I get that name mixed up, but where we help train and do actually kind of

virtual training programs for physicians in other markets that wouldn't have

any access to that kind of training

to a company that was doing all this work in, in, uh,

ORs where they're actually watching surgeries and that kind of stuff.

They're training people from.

And doing that.

And I thought this is going to be interesting for rural health.

I mean, right now, I think we're sort of resigned to the fact that if you

need a major surgery, you're driving to salt lake, but you know, the

rural health stuff has me fascinated.

I didn't have that problem per se, in the markets that I serve.

But the, it is, is such a multifaceted problem.

The technology, maybe isn't up to speed.

You don't have the connectivity.

Uh, Uh, accessibility to doctors trained medical staff is not there.

Right.

Is that something that you guys have groups looking at

and you're bringing technology?

Yeah.

So, um, take our orthopedic hospital in our Creek team.

Nielsen rehab is Craig T Nielsen is state of the arts.

Whenever you come out to salt lake, you gotta come and you gotta see this.

Cause it is, it opened.

I, I feel bad for them.

They open right at the start of the.

So when they had their one year anniversary was smack in the middle of

it, but the, what they do awesome services to the point where when a patient comes

into the room, they can actually control all of the devices in the room by, um,

breath, if, if needed, if they have no capacity in their arms or their legs, um,

that the city itself is almost set up.

Like, it looks like the whole time.

And it, you know, you know, what rehab hospitals can sometimes look

like, or, you know, they're, they're not necessarily the prettiest.

This is very much, uh, state-of-the-art the programs, the

services and what they're doing.

The counterpart, the rehab, um, facility, just down the street, they

do surgeries and, and train residents and medical students on surgeries.

They, they kind of, um, project the.

And I got to do a tour of it, kind of an I'm kind of a geeky person.

They're like, do you want to see the cadavers?

And I'm like, you bet, I'm sure they thought, well,

let's freak out the it person.

And I'm like, no, I love, you know, but they, they actually take a cadaver bone.

They recreate it with a 3d printer and then they show and train the residents on

how do I place this pin in this cadaver?

They're projecting, you know, the whole surgery, medical students can kind of

be part of this because it's, you know, it's just a cadaver bone that's been

recreated, but it helps in the training process of those kinds of procedures.

It is,

man.

It's such a, must be such a fun job because there's so many aspects to

it that you get to get to play with.

Yeah.

Thank you

for stopping out.

Really good.

Yeah.

This is great.

Thanks.

Don't forget to check back as we have more of these interviews

coming to you, that's all for today.

If you know of someone that might benefit from our channel,

please forward them a note.

They can subscribe on our website this week, health.com or wherever you listen

to podcasts, apple, Google, overcast, Spotify, Stitcher, you get the picture.

We are everywhere.

We want to thank our channel sponsors who are investing in our mission to

develop the next generation of health.

VMware Hill-Rom Starbridge advisors, McAfee and Aruba networks.

Thanks for listening.