“We know what we’re after. It’s not the implementation of a tool; it’s the pursuit of value.”
For Mark Zirkelbach, the mission has always been the same, starting with his first foray in healthcare and continuing to his present post as CIO at Loma Linda University Medical Center. Focusing on value has served him and his teams well, and he believes it will become increasingly important going forward.
Leaders, he said during a recent Keynote with Sarah Richardson, have an opportunity to “transform the way things have been done” and “leverage digital capabilities much more readily than we have in the past.”
Mark Zirkelbach
And while technology certainly plays a critical role, it isn’t just about swapping out one tool for another. Rather, true transformation starts by asking a few simple questions: “what value are we after that we’re not getting today? What’s going on that needs to be different?” he said. “That’s a very different conversation than ‘I need this system’ or ‘I want this system.’”
At Loma Linda, the conversation started about two years ago when the leadership and operations teams developed “a new way of working” that didn’t rely on “keeping up with what the business wanted to do,” Zirkelbach recalled. “We needed to provide value at the speed of market. And so, we simplified our governance,” and began working closely with operations to determine which tasks are most important and how much value needs to be generated.
A critical aspect of that strategy is agility, he said, noting that Loma Linda has moved away from the traditional cycle of product selection, go-live, post-go-live, and stabilization. “It’s probably not a good way to do things because we’re reacting to the market and not focusing on whether it was a good implementation.”
And in some cases, a project that started out strong may lose steam or prove unsustainable overtime, which is why it’s critical to adopt an agile mindset and be willing to take action “if a solution isn’t providing the value we need.”
The challenge – particularly for those who, unlike Zirkelbach, lack experience in consulting – is in determining how to quantify the value of a solution or initiative. His recommendation? Create two separate buckets for direct and indirect savings. The former can be measured by dollar savings, including reductions in resource or labor costs, while the latter is a bit trickier to calculate. “It’s not necessarily about reducing total time, it’s about simplifying the work,” he said, which can be shown through intangible measures like eliminating steps.
Again, it comes down to value. “That, to me, is the sweet spot for automation – having those nuanced conversations to know this is going to make a difference,” he noted.
As part of that philosophy, Zirkelbach believes automation shouldn’t just be about reducing. “It should be more about, can we make it easier to do the right thing or get the right outcome?” he remarked. “If you only focused on automating manual steps, you might be missing an opportunity to be more holistic and understand the situation and what really matters.”
Another important aspect is proactively identifying value, which his team does in collaboration with the business, to stay ahead of the curve. “Submitting a request to IS is probably too late to be market competitive,” Zirkelbach noted. On the other hand, “if conversations are occurring in real-time, where we’re piloting some technology or process to see if we can make a difference on this proactive pursuit of value and move at the speed of market, that's big.”
To that end, Loma Linda has put structures in place to monitor market trends. They’re also “trying to understand what’s going on, networking more, and spending time looking at what our core vendors are doing with their development roadmaps and starting to map it to our value proposition.” Doing so helps them to remain proactive, while also ensuring alignment with their vendors.
It’s just as crucial, however, to make sure internal roadmaps are in sync, he said, noting that all roadmaps are developed “collaboratively,” with input from both the service line and IS. Together, the organization is able to “organize around getting the roadmap done” and focusing on the things that “bring the most value.”
© Copyright 2024 Health Lyrics All rights reserved
