Today in health. With it. Welcome to 2022 today. I was going to talk about Cerner, but today I think I'm going to talk about what I believe will happen this year and why it matters to you. My name is bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of this week in health. It a set of channels dedicated to keeping health it staff current and engaged.

We want to thank our show sponsors who are investing in developing the next generation of health. It leaders, Gordian dynamics, Quill health tau site nuance, and current health. Check them out at this week. health.com/today.

As you know, on the today show, we normally take one news story, break it down and ask a, so what, why does it matter and why should I care about the story? Today, no story. Instead, I'm going to take you through my process to prepare for the year. If I were a CIO, this is the process I go through. I generally take the last two weeks of the year off the first week of that vacation.

I will spend looking back on the year that was, and the second week I will look at the year that's coming. At me. So in this case, 20 22, 1 of the things that I find missing in today's leaders is foresight. That is doing today. What needs to be done

to be ready for what is going to happen next year or even two years from now. We fall prey to the tyranny of the urgent and don't lay the groundwork for what is needed to ensure our future is not disrupted. You might be saying, what are you talking about? I can't keep up with what I'm doing today. How can we be doing stuff that will prepare us for 2023 or even 2024?

Well, the answer to that is in the question.

If you can do things to prepare you for 2023 this year. You will be ready for what comes next

and can start stepping away from this one year window that you've gotten trapped into. An example. I was recently talking to a CIO. And we were discussing the staffing shortages specifically in the clinical area. I said to him, the problem we face is that we didn't anticipate this two years ago. And because of that,

The stuff we were able to do this year will only moderately help the situation. We have a lot of foundation work to do. With regard to clinical and administrative automation that will make our existing clinical staff 20 to 40% more effective, but we haven't laid the groundwork for that. What if we did see that say 12 months ago and made the investments in olive and artists' site, instead of doing evaluations on platforms this year,

we would be working on second and third level use cases. Hopefully you're starting to see the picture. So, how do you see into the future? It's not that hard. Really? You just need to create your, I believe statements to start the year. I've talked about this before on the show, I'm going to go into a little more detail in this.

Episode, this is how I strategically plan my year as a CIO.

As the urgent cramps in, I try to make sure that I revisit this list to see if I'm staying ahead of what I believe is coming next. I base the statements on trends, research, and experience. I recognized which of my statements are surefire locks and which ones are out there a little bit. And then I act accordingly. I socialize my thoughts with my staff and my peers.

To see what resonates. The style, I will often create even more statements. I did the exercise for this year as if I were a CIO. So let me tell you what I believe. All right. So first.

You have to determine what you believe will happen with regard to the pandemic. This was a fool's errand for the most part in the first year of the pandemic. But we knew enough for me to protect that year, that the public health emergency would last well through, , 20, 20 and I was able to say with almost certainty that it would continue through 2021.

And here is what I believe for this year. We're entering the third year of the pandemic. I expect it to begin to run its course. These things don't last forever. And the virus rarely gets worse as the pandemic moves along. I expect the election to elevate the rhetoric, but I expect what is actually happening is the pandemic is running its course.

And right or wrong. It doesn't really matter. What matters is, what do you believe? What do the people at your system and in your community believe that's a statement that I believe for our community and I would start to make decisions based on that. All right. Next. I mentioned it's an election year. It is an election year that elevates healthcare discussions, cost of care, surprise bills, price, transparency, Medicare for all, and the effectiveness or lack of effectiveness of the us healthcare system.

In comparison to other countries will be top of mind conversations the activities and statements of your health system leaders will come under more scrutiny.

During an election year. So keep that in mind as well. Things like acquisitions I'm going to activity will come under more scrutiny. So just keep that in mind.

So with that in mind, I'd have answers to election year conversations, which you know, are going to happen this year. I would be able to talk about cost of care, surprise bills, price, transparency. Medicare for all. And those kinds of things just have some talking points together. What is your health system doing? How does it and technology play into some of those issues. Also understand your company's.

, communications policy. Are you able to talk to the media about such things and are you not able to talk to them? Don't get sideways on those kinds of issues. Know what you can and cannot talk about with the media?

All right. Let's keep moving. Two movements are going on in interoperability, one commercial and the second is government led. Government is the one to keep an eye on.

It's the only one that can stand toe-to-toe with the players who are holding it back and provide the building blocks for the commercial players. So keep that in mind as much as I'm excited about the commercial movements and what's going on in terms of interoperability and patient centric interoperability, I believe the government movements is the thing to keep an eye on and as they continue to move that ball down the court with 21st century cures as the backstop, I think we're going to see some interesting things happen in the commercial space.

Next thing, automation in all its forms will take over the conversation this year, administrative it operations and clinical automation. We'll need to be addressed because of the staffing shortages. We are three years behind in planning and execution to address current staffing shortages. And we have a lot of catching up to do.

That's what I believe.

Let's keep going health. It now needs a development muscle. This is something we ran away from about a decade ago. Now we have a need for those tools in our arsenal. Low-code and no-code solutions are the preferred solutions, but it will still require product management capabilities within the health system, which takes me to something else. I believe just a side note.

How does job as product manager? Hardest job to fill with qualified people, remain security roles and jobs where skills need to evolve and grow in healthcare. We'll be around data and analytics, new skills, new tools are required and emerging. This is an area to put some distance between you and competitors, organizations that master the use of data will emerge as winners.

Those that invest, not those that give away their data in hopes of return, but those who understand how they can use their data to improve outcomes, clinician effectiveness, and experience. And explore new revenue streams are going to be the winners. All right. Let's talk about , the health tech market and the investment specifically valuations for startups. We'll come back to reality towards the end of this year and into 2023.

Y. We've been riding a wave of free money since the fed chairman Ben Bernakie introduced quantitative easing almost a decade ago, the fed will be forced to reign that in, to fight inflation, which for those of us who lived in the seventies realized that inflation of wreaks havoc in an economy. Less free money means highly speculative ventures without well-defined value props, fail, and just less speculation in general, less free money washing over the economy means lower valuations just happens. This means pick your partners. Well, good leadership is primary strong value props are mandatory. , good existing client base is important. , this will take some time and may end up being a 20, 23 event. But thinking about it. Is important to avoid pains later.

All right. There's still a lot of money in the system. So MNA is going to be strong this year seems like. Every year we're saying MNA is going to be strong and that's because the consolidation is not done in healthcare.

And we will probably be looking at it for the next three to five years with significant announcements every year for the next five years. There will be more scrutiny in an election year, as I said before, but expect hospital consolidation to continue. Cyber attacks will continue.

Let's face it. We've not defended the unsophisticated attacks yet. They're getting through. Look, they're going after low-hanging fruit more sophisticated attacks are on the horizon. The breach numbers will go up year over year.

My take away, get my house in order set the right expectations and have a solid plan to recover. From an attack. These are a few of the things that I believe this will guide my time from a macro perspective while we continue to keep the trains running. Now I ask you, no matter what level of organization you are in, if you're with a provider or a vendor partner, what do you believe?

If you think my ideas are silly, then perhaps you can develop statements that are the exact opposite and run with that. The purpose of these statements is to make sure that about 20% of your time this year is spent preparing for 2023.

And if you do this, you're going to thank me later. You're going to be less reactive. You're going to be more responsive to the needs of the organization. And you're going to get ahead of the curve. Thinking about those statements I made, none of them are way out there. They're all based on what's going on today.

And what are the trends and where could they take us moving forward? I encourage you to do the same thing. It's a great exercise. And I always want to know what do people believe? Because whether you. Verbalize it or not. What you believe dictates how you act.

That's all for today. I'm going to be thinking of different ways that you can utilize the show. And one of the ways I have noted last year, and I'm going to continue to note is. Tell your friends about the show. Have them hit this week. Dot com.

Go to apple, Google, overcast, Spotify, Stitcher. They can subscribe there. I get more people listening to it. Start the conversation and discuss what you think is going to happen in healthcare. We want to thank our channel sponsors who are investing in our mission to develop the next generation of health leaders.

Gordian dynamics, Quill tau site nuance and current health. Check them out at this week. health.com/today. Thanks for listening that's all for now