Welcome back to Optimum Healthcare IT’s “3 Questions with…” series, where we interview top executives in the Healthcare IT space. We search for the leaders with track records of service excellence, who are passionate about their work and make patient safety their top priority. In this installment, we have three questions for Michael Archuleta, CIO, Mt. San Rafael Hospital, one of the top CIOs to know in 2019.
OHIT: Given the relative unpredictability of how the healthcare market will change, what does the future of strategic planning look like in healthcare IT?
Michael Archuleta: The healthcare field is always evolving and advancing at a rate, unlike any other. I have always stated that healthcare organizations and clinics are digital companies that happen to deliver healthcare services. With the digitization of healthcare, it has become more and more important to plan for the future in order for any healthcare organization to be successful in the years to come. By planning for the unknown, hospitals, clinics, and other organizations in the healthcare field can be better equipped for whatever may occur down the road. It is critical that healthcare organizations have a strong strategic plan that allows for more efficiency in all aspects of the business of running a digital organization, regardless of their size.
OHIT: What separates healthcare organizations who excel at consistent and continuous outcomes improvement from those who do not?
Michael Archuleta: Healthcare organizations who excel in the digital age of healthcare focus on senior management support, effective performance monitoring, building and maintaining a proficient workforce, creating and supporting effective leaders across the organization, expertise-driven practices, and interdisciplinary team play, but the main focus on an excelling organization is the overall culture. Often times, it’s an overlooked necessity to facilitate a culture within the organization that aids in understanding the digitalization of healthcare, while accepting and supporting that we are a digital company who happen to deliver healthcare services. We must realize that technology is a strategic tool that allows us to focus on improving our patient-centric strategy, which creates innovation that allows us to build asynchronous tools that benefit our patients both inside and outside the walls of our organization. Conclusively, this is the bottom line of why we are all here: we believe patient care is number one, and our aim is to improve it as much as possible.
OHIT: When thinking about security and keeping a healthcare organization's data safe, what metrics or KPIs do you use to measure security effectiveness?
Michael Archuleta: You need to determine if you are measuring the value and effectiveness of your cybersecurity efforts. Without establishing the proper metrics, you're flying blind, which puts your organization at risk of potential breaches. It is critical to continue to learn and improve by engaging while developing learning and improvement plans. You truly need to determine how departments work within your organization and how they view cybersecurity. It is critical that the organization has a strong cybersecurity awareness culture. It is also important to establish relevance by engaging and understanding the business context while simultaneously identifying common interests. We must realize that cybersecurity truly is a matter of life and death.
