Health systems have the tools and inclination to view their operations from front to back, but they need to apply that technique to the IT department as well, HIMSS17 speaker Ryan Klein said.
The most prominent issue is visibility — especially as it relates to infrastructure monitoring and availability.
“What we’re talking about is a situation where most healthcare IT departments don’t have the visibility into their infrastructure so that it is meaningful to the patient experience,” said Klein, vice president of management engineering and process improvement at St. Joseph Health in Anaheim, California. “They need to connect the dots to a patient experience.”
St. Joseph Health, in fact, recently completed a thorough enterprise monitoring overhaul, implementing an “as a service” model that enables them to identify potential issues before they happen.
The oversight covers more than 1,000 applications and tens of thousands of users.
“The most simplistic technology activity inside the datacenter is the root of system availability, app uptime and utilization of doctors and nurses to deliver patient care,” Klein said. “Having that visibility, seeing what the detailed nuances mean and how to get ahead of them proactively has benefitted the system and the patient experience.”
Chronologically, the process took three months of planning and six months to implement. The time frame varies for each organization, depending on their size, he said. St. Joseph has 16 hospitals and a multitude of clinics in its system.
As a result of the initiative, the health system has seen a noteworthy reduction in downtime and an increase in uptime and availability, optimizing IT capabilities, Klein said.
More hospitals need to pay attention to the IT visibility issue, he said, and it starts with the decision-makers in the C-suite.
“Senior managers have typically overlooked it because they don’t have experience in it,” Klein said. “The tech team knows what needs to be done, but they need to get top leadership involved.”
Klein will share St. Joseph’s experience in detail during his seminar, “A Single Pane of Glass Will Never Exist,” on Thursday, Feb. 23, at noon in Room 206A.
HIMSS17 runs from Feb. 19-23, 2017 at the Orange County Convention Center.
This article is part of our ongoing coverage of HIMSS17. Visit Destination HIMSS17 for previews, reporting live from the show floor and after the conference.
