Workflow

John Halamka, MD, recently started a process that some may consider regressive. He began deleting his social media accounts to improve the signal-to-noise ratio in his life.

The startup’s COVALENCE Analytics Platform is designed to simplify healthcare and help enterprises better manage population health.

The initiative has been so successful that plans are underway to expand it into more hospitals.

I was fortunate to work with an excellent executive coach several years ago. He helped me gain new insight into who I am and how I lead. I am a much better leader as a result of our year-long work together. And I periodically reconnect with him now to bounce around ideas when going through major transitions. Deciding to work with a coach can be unsettling. I told myself, “sure there are things on my performance evaluation I could work on but mostly I’m fine and don’t need any help; after all no one is perfect”. And I also told myself, “ok, I admit I could use some help but how much do I really have to expose and what will people think if they know I’m using a coach”. So yes, I had those kinds of thoughts when I started and expect you might as well. But my coach put me at ease. He got to know me and started helping me look critically at my leadership style and areas I needed to improve. He was not there to judge me or make me feel inadequate. He took me where I was at. A good coach doesn’t have all the answers but knows how to ask the right questions. A good coach helps you look critically at yourself, your relationships and how you come across to others. A good coach walks the fine balance of challenging you and encouraging you. I have provided professional coaching services to a number of people in the past year and plan to do more in the future. While I have been both a formal and informal mentor to many people over the years and will continue to do that, coaching is different. “Mentoring involves a developmental relationship between a more experienced mentor and a less experienced partner, and typically involves sharing of advice. Coaching is assisting leaders to perform, learn, stay healthy and balanced, and effectively guide their teams to successfully reach desired goals and exceed individual and organizational expectations. Coaching leaders enables them to close the gap between who they are and who they want to be.” — from Linkage on Coaching Leaders I encourage people to find a mentor – look for someone who you consider a role model in your field or in your organization. Ask them if they would be willing to spend some time periodically talking with you and providing guidance and encouragement. Working with a professional coach needs to be considered as an investment in you. Some large organizations develop an internal cohort of coaches to work with others in their organization. They train the cohort and then make assignments or provide them as resources when employees request a coach. These coaching services may be tied into overall leadership development programs. If you have such a program at your organization, consider talking to your boss about whether you can use it. If you don’t have this option at your organization but you are ready and willing to engage in a deeper, focused coaching relationship then consider finding a coach to work with. Depending on your level in an organization and if your management is willing to invest in you, they may cover the cost. Or you might consider sharing the cost – this could send a strong signal to your boss that you are serious about your professional development and willing to invest not just your time but some of your own money. Or you may decide it’s something you can and will pay for on your own as part of your long term investment in you. Just like your gym membership and the time you spend working out is an investment in you, so too is your professional development. Working with a coach is an investment in you. Blog originally posted on www.sueschade.com.

Doctors spend more than half of their time on EHRs and deskwork and only about 27 percent in direct clinical visits with patients. One researcher said the industry needs to refocus doctors' efforts from facing computer screens to engaging patients.

The West Virginia and Kentucky health system announced a cyberattack over the weekend, but has yet to determine the cause. The situation is testing just how long a hospital can survive when clinicians and operations are running on pencil and paper.

The hope is that radiology optimization and predictive modeling will pay dividends, with innovations scalable to other health systems.

People often ask me how I find time to write a weekly blog with a big, busy CIO job. I tell them all the same thing – it’s a discipline. I try to start early in the week with an idea, draft it one night, come back to it the next night to finalize and then post it on Thursday or Friday morning. Topics are often timely; something strikes me and I tell myself “that will blog”. I add the idea to my running list. This week it included tips on doing presentations for executive groups, personal organization challenges and tips, and what’s possible to accomplish as an interim leader in just 6 months. But this week I had as many as five new ideas but no time to start writing any of them. By Thursday night if I haven’t settled on a topic and started, I’m in trouble. Taking time to write may compete with critical work I need to finish up by the end of the week. This week was one of those weeks. This week started out with a bang.  By 9AM Monday, I was juggling 4 different issues. A system issue after a scheduled weekend service pack upgrade caused problems in our revenue cycle systems. There was an escalated physician report of an access problem over the weekend. Working with my team we could move all but one to closure by the end of the day. It was a week full of meetings and follow-ups squeezed in between. And managing the endless stream of emails. But it was an atypical week with late afternoon/evening meetings and dinners with colleagues every night. This kind of evening schedule impacts one of my other disciplines – nightly exercise. I just have to find the time when I can. We dealt with dissatisfied and frustrated physicians over EMR issues – some that we thought were behind us. We finished prep for our monthly executive IT Steering Committee which included some critical infrastructure presentations on a significant data center investment and disaster recovery planning. This is what a week looks like for CIOs and their leadership team. So the most recent blog topics I have added to my running list will have to wait for future weeks. My blog writing discipline continues. I probably need to go back to my original approach when I started blogging over 2 years ago – decide the topic on the weekend and start the draft on Sunday night before the week kicks into high gear. But this week was one of “those weeks.” Blog originally posted on www.sueschade.com.  

The changing marketplace is giving healthcare organizations an opportunity to hire job-hunting executives and physicians, according to a new study. But they’ll have to be creative with incentives.  

Many physicians and nurses are traveling across desolate EHR wastelands replete with digital detritus, pixel dust and other non-value-add items.