What do you view as your primary mission as CIO?
It’s changed a lot during the years. My primary mission right now is to make sure I help interpret what’s happening in the IT world back to Good Samaritan Hospital – what does it mean to the hospital – and help the leadership understand how do we translate those things into strategy. It’s not so much twisting the knobs and turning the dials. It’s understanding the nuances of how that technology can be leveraged to allow the strategies for the organization to be successful.
Has meaningful use changed your job?
Changed my life? Yes. I think it’s been a really interesting thing for me. It’s actually allowed me to get a much, much broader view of healthcare. Keep in mind that my organization is 232 beds, and we’re in rural southwest Indiana. I can drive not too far from the front door of the hospital and I can be in the middle of a cornfield. It’s helped me understand where healthcare is going as an industry and get a little broader view than just technology.
What is your proudest achievement as CIO?
To be successful in an industry for so many years and be able to count so many of the leaders out there as personal friends of mine. I can pick up the phone and call them and they do me as well. We have that rapport that if there’s an issue that I’m having, I’m sure that others have experienced it or are in the middle of it as well. We can communicate and collaborate and look at opportunities to help each other be successful.
What’s been your greatest challenge as CIO?
Just keeping my head above water. I’ve always been one of the ones in the industry that’s advocating for the appropriate use of health information technology to have a positive impact on healthcare. I’m not an advocate of technology for technology’s sake. There has to be a direct tie to process redesign and moving the process of care forward in this organization. When you boil it down, we take care of people, and the people we take care of are our friends and our families and our community. If it’s my family and my friends, I want them to have the absolute best possible experience they can while they’re here and have the appropriate positive outcome.
What can smaller organizations like Good Samaritan in rural Indiana bring to the table to share with other organizations?
I’ve always called Good Sam kind of a cusp hospital. We’re too big to do some things and we’re not big enough to do other things. I think we have some advantages over the larger facilities because we can move in a more entrepreneurial fashion. As we start seeing the market and certain aspects of patient care change, we can move this organization pretty quickly. The advantage I think we have over the smaller hospitals is that because we are large enough to cover our operational costs, we can put some money out there to put in the bank so we can refresh the building and infrastructure and add technology.
Where will healthcare IT be in five or 10 years from now?
I think we’re just starting to scratch the surface of what we can do. I live in Indiana, so we have the opportunity here just because of the infrastructure for health information exchange to do a lot of things that other states can only dream about. With the work that’s currently being done, and what’s planned to be done between now and 2015, I think we’re going to see a more connected medical record for the patient.
Recent reads: Christian describes himself as “grand reader of early American history.” He's recently read The Federalist Papers again. Other recent reads include The Prince of Frog Town, by Rick Bragg; Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla; and Einstein: His Life and Universe, by Walter Isaacson.
