Welcome back to Optimum Healthcare IT’s “4 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 five questions for Andy Crowder, Corporate SVP, and CIO at Scripps Health
Andy Crowder: Not surprising to my colleagues within the HIT industry; however, our challenges also serve as our greatest sources for innovation & transformation.
Our opportunities lie in digital health and our digital roadmap. We will complete our enterprise deployment of Epic in October and quickly pivot our team’s focus on our Digital Health initiatives:
Our opportunities lie in digital health and our digital roadmap. We will complete our enterprise deployment of Epic in October and quickly pivot our team’s focus on our Digital Health initiatives.
Andy Crowder: I am so excited about our IT managers and leaders. Spending time with them on our current challenges, successes, and opportunities to improve is a constant source of inspiration. Even just a few hours a week with these passionate, thoughtful and intelligent leaders affirms for me we as a team can make the improvements to healthcare that our customers and nation require.
IT managers and departmental leads attend our annual IT strategic planning retreat, where we take the organizational strategies and link them to our efforts. They are center stage in not only aligning organizational strategy but also selecting the projects and activities we will embark on as a team.
Andy Crowder: This is a hard balance and one that requires a deliberate focus on due process, corporate expertise outside of IS, attention to regulatory compliance, and leveraging great supporting resources within CHIME and other industry bodies. We are required to share information with everyone for the purposes of providing care, improved customer access, and drive improvements in cost and quality. I subscribe to the saying, “A wise person has many advisors.” Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) Powell Hamilton, the audit and compliance team led by Gerry Soderstrom, the legal team with Brad Ellis and Richard Sheridan, the Board of Trustees and the great Scripps Health technology leaders serve as wonderful advisors, ensuring we achieve balance in information sharing and security, as well as all of our corporate endeavors.
Andy Crowder: Scripps Health has an IS steering committee called IS Executive Oversight Committee (ISEOC) that reports to the executive cabinet, led by President and CEO Chris Van Gorder. The steering group meets quarterly and oversees all of the strategic IT initiatives and the annual capital and operating budgets to ensure we are meeting our targets, achieving the desired outcomes and making modifications if we need a change in direction. Underneath ISEOC is a series of leadership councils that tie partially to our organizational structure or primary verticals. The leadership councils are chaired by key organizational executive stakeholders and normally meet monthly. These councils are accountable for ensuring the execution of the strategies approved by ISEOC.