[00:00:02] Speaker A: Welcome to Health Data Talks where industry experts offer bite sized tips and trends for managing legacy data.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: Welcome to Health Data Talks from Harmony Healthcare it where our healthcare leaders explore the real world decisions shaping how data is managed, accessed and trusted across this life cycle. I'm your host Eric Johnson and today I'm joined by Drex Deford, principal and at the 229 Project and former healthcare CIO.
Together we'll explore the evolving priorities of healthcare IT leaders, what's top of mind heading into EpicUGM and how CIOs are preparing for the future and how these decisions fit into the broader rhythm of change across healthcare. Drex, thanks for joining us today.
[00:00:47] Speaker A: Hey Eric, it's great to be here. There's so many things to talk about.
[00:00:52] Speaker B: Absolutely. Well, we're going to touch on a handful of those here over the course of, oh, 10 or 15 minutes. So we appreciate your time joining.
[00:01:01] Speaker A: Of course.
[00:01:01] Speaker B: Before we jump in, can you tell our listeners just a little bit more about yourself and the work that you and your team does at 2 to 9 project?
[00:01:13] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely.
The short version of me. Longtime health care CIO, 20 years in the US Air Force as a CIO hospital administrator, finished up as chief technology officer for Air Force Health Worldwide operations in Washington, D.C. and then Scripps as the CIO, Seattle Children's Steward Healthcare in Boston, became an independent consultant, got wrapped into a lot of cybersecurity conversations, a lot of cybersecurity companies and wound up at CrowdStrike as executive healthcare strategist for about three years. And then about two and a half or so years ago came to the 229 project. Bill and I had known each other for years and then Sarah came on board almost immediately after I joined and it really sort of accelerated our intention, which is to better connect healthcare leaders to solve really tough problems. And we do that through city tour dinners where we travel across the country all year long, meeting with 15 execs at night over a nice meal and a lot of conversations about those tough problems. We do Summits, which are two and a half day events, not just for CIOs but for, you know, analytics folks and CMIOs and chief information security officers and many others.
And then we have regional staff roundtables, which is our opportunity to go into markets and bring together entire teams from health systems across the region.
Those we're really excited about those, a lot of those will kick off this fall. So it's really about helping healthcare execs find people they can lean on and learn from and that's all about the 229 project.
[00:02:57] Speaker B: Yeah. Fantastic. Well, we appreciate what you guys do and we appreciate being a partner to the group as we've benefited from some of those conversations.
[00:03:07] Speaker A: No, we appreciate you too.
[00:03:09] Speaker B: Appreciate it.
Well, let's dive right in. And I want to kick us off with something in particular that the 229 project just recently came out with, which is your state of the CIO spring report.
And it was really expansive in terms of the number of healthcare leaders that you were able to ask to participate.
It's something that we really internalized and shared with our wider group in terms of a direction. And I always feel like these are the kinds of resources that become very timely. Right.
Because how you start the year and how you end the year is never the same. Right. And the checkpoint is okay, let's check in in the middle of the year. Ish. Right. And say, well, how are we trending? Right. And how is how we thought the year was going to go anywhere near how we're progressing? And to me, especially being on the marketing side and conversations that we have with our sales teams and our commercial teams, it's really all about trying to understand the problems and how those are evolving. And are those still the same problems? Are those still the same challeng and are we able to facilitate and have the right kinds of conversations that are able to solve those challenges and that's how we look to these kinds of resources. And so with that being said, I'd really welcome to have you talk about that report a little bit in detail and just sort of in general and then maybe just share with, you know, what was the origin behind that.
Maybe if you don't mind, talk about the methodology to start with and then we'll get into maybe some, some initial findings.
[00:05:10] Speaker A: Yeah. So, you know, we do these city tour dinners and summits and regional staff roundtables. So this has been going on for several years now. We've continued to grow the community and create this sort of stickiness, helpfulness environment across the folks who attend the events.
We decided sort of this spring, I guess, about the time just before obviously the report came out that let's try to do some analytics around this. Let's send folks some questions and see what kind of a response rate we get. We were obviously surprised too. A lot of, a lot of the surveys went out and almost all of them came back. Folks really did reply to this and it was.
And they were very honest. They not only answered the questions like the multiple choice questions, but they Also put in a lot of additional information. They wrote into the open space about the things that they're working on and the hard problems and the concerns that they have. And so we turned that into a report. And, and this is a thing that we will do now going forward. We do it before all of our events. We do another survey after all of our events. Not about the events, but about the environment and the progress that they're making. And so we'll continue to sort of bring that together and, and offer that to, to the folks who participate in the survey and certainly, certainly to our partners, to giving you that kind of insight into what's really happening in the, in the market. And there were a lot of things that were really interesting in the survey. Yeah, I guess, you know, there's, there's always surprises and there's always things that don't really surprise you. What didn't really surprise me was the effort that's going into AI deployments and pilots.
Over 80% had some kind of an AI capability that was past the pilot stage and into production.
And there's a huge demand, There's a big demand for more projects all the time. Everybody wants to sprinkle a little AI on it, but there are limited resources. So this whole problem about governance and prioritization is a real challenge. And that came through again and again and again on the report.
And there continues to be this concern about roi. Are we doing AI for the sake of doing AI or are we doing it because there's real value there? And I think that progression is happening pretty quickly. The other thing that's really interesting is that we've always been concerned about data. I think as CIOs and as the CIOs team, what are we doing with data? We just have a bunch of blobs. Is it, you know, what's the data quality look like? There's more complete understanding now as we get into, into these AI projects. Now we have a real reason to do the things that we need to do with data. Data is incredibly important. It's the foundation of all the stuff we're going to do with these AI tools and agents. And so that has to be squared away. And that was again, I guess, surprising and not surprising that, oh, now everybody gets data. Here we go. We're going to, we're going to maybe start doing all the right things we should do.
[00:08:22] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Excellent.
There was a couple of points here in particular, of course, that we hone in on as a vendor or partner to, you know, the, the Community. And it was this quote, and it's something that we. We try to reinforce, too, as part of our culture. But it's a highlight here that. That says partners win on collaboration, not feature depth.
And so I'm curious on your perspective around that. Right. Can you provide some additional context in terms of the voice that you hear from CIOs, and why is that even more important today than it ever has been?
It's certainly a theme that is that you hear about, but why is this even more important and relevant today in terms of how CIOs are determining the kinds of partners they're going to choose to work with? Right.
[00:09:22] Speaker A: It's, you know, when you think about.
I think, because I have a lot of scars over the course of my career, and, you know, I talk to these leaders on a daily basis and they give me ptsd. This whole issue of, like, how.
How do we choose who our partners are and what's the important parts that drive us to that choice?
And companies create a lot of really interesting things, and there's a lot of knobs and dials and switches, and they can do a lot of cool things.
But there are also a lot of companies who will sell something to a health system and say, there you go, you're on your own. And they never implement it fully. They never really get it right. They get super frustrated. It's a waste of money. They, you know, they. This is why sometimes they're aggravated with partners, but the partners that get in with them and understand the workflow and understand the problem and understand the value that is being desired. This is the problem that I have. I need for you to help me solve it. Be my teammate. Don't just be somebody who sells me something.
That's where real partnerships happen. And so I think that ability to help deploy and get it done and make it work and provide true value and be there when you're needed, I mean, that's. That's the difference here. When you sort of talk about how real partnership works and, and everybody else, that should be probably categorized just as a pure vendor. I'm just selling something.
[00:11:02] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
Excellent. Thank you. Yeah, I'm going to transition here into.
Well, we're coming up into August. Right. And August usually means a gathering in Madison. Right.
Literally, almost like a version of a CIO Super Bowl.
You know, that happens so on the, you know, we're on the doorstep of ugm.
And of course, that always drives a certain amount of excitement, interest, engagement across that ecosystem.
Was there anything about the surveys and findings and those conversations that you had with CIOs about what you're expecting to be top of mind for attendees. And I know the convenient answer is going to be AI something, so I'm very curious about that.
But in addition to that, they're also experiencing something that we've never seen out of a company again, that is so unique. Right. And they are with some changes in leadership.
So interested in how, you know, people are thinking about UGM coming up and of course what's top of mind. But then your perspective on, on those leadership changes. Yeah, that have just coming. That are very different for everybody to experience.
[00:12:30] Speaker A: It's, it is, it's really interesting to kind of have these conversations looking at the survey. But a lot of it is as you get closer, you know, as you said, as you start to, to swoop in on the super bowl, people start to speculate about what's going to happen in the Super Bowl. And I think for us, we just came out of a set of three summits that we did in Chicago.
CIOs, rev cycle leaders and chief Medical Information officers. I was in the room with the cmios and I think ugm, you know, the conversation around ugm, always a great opportunity to hear about new capabilities that are coming to Epic.
Timelines for the products and the new capabilities and when they're going to be available.
And there's always a surprise. So there's something that we don't know or we're not thinking about this year.
I'm sure that they're going to pop out as a, as a new surprise. They're continuing to make progress with ambient listening.
I think that's always sort of part of the conversation of like, do we just go with Epic or do we, you know, use another product because Epic's having a hard time catching up or it's going to be a long time before they catch up. All that's always going to be kind of part of the conversation.
I think the top level changes at the company.
A lot of leaders who are going to ugm, that's one of the things they want to hear about.
They want to know the company's leadership plans, what's happening in the future, what's happening in the next year. Are there any, any other shoes that are going to drop that we don't know about, like what's going on?
I think from the CMIO room, the conversation was a lot about healthcare. Execs expect this kind of stuff to happen with other partners.
It happens all the time. So it's not surprising when it comes to Epic, they're a little more sensitive about it because Epic has been kind of this rock solid stable company for years. Very stable at the top, not a lot of change. And so when you see changes, and especially a few of them happen very closely knit together, I'm not sure it's going to shake. I wouldn't say it shakes people's confidence, but it's way more noticeable than it is in any other company. And so they're curious and that's one of the, one of the things I hope they talk about in Madison. I'm sure they will.
[00:15:01] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Well, it's.
There's always something compelling that's going to come out of that conference. And so this is an interesting develop, right. That has got everybody's attention for all sorts of reasons given this time of year.
And certainly we are thinking this way too. But 2027 is, I mean, is around the corner. Right. And so as much as we just got done talking about the survey results of something that kind of represented a mid year point or even a little bit early now we, most people have to be thinking about what you're gonna, you know, what we need to do for 2027. Right. So the belief is, is those themes that are most likely to carry over and how we're going to finish the year all of a sudden start to be some themes that carry over to say, well, is this how we're going to start the year? And maybe they will, maybe they won't. Right? There's still, we still have months that can shape that.
But given that, you know, as you start to think about the next 12 to 18 months, is there a piece of advice that you'd give health care CIOs as they think about that timeline is going into, into next year based upon some of those conversations, is there something that comes to mind forward looking that would be advice that you would provide?
[00:16:28] Speaker A: Yeah, I think we have, you know, what we've seen in the past couple of years, few years maybe is just the change is going to be constant and in many ways it's not predictable. One of the things that we thought was super predictable for years and years were at least semi predictable, they would show up the same way every time was kind of the federal government and Medicare and Medicaid payments and research funding and those kinds of things. And obviously that has become very unpredictable too. So you know, if I was given advice, I would say stay flexible and build not only the org structure but the IT architecture that lets you Be flexible because of all this unpredictability. And it's not just unpredictability in health care. It's unpredictability in the tech space.
You know, the lack of chips and the expensive chips and those kinds of things that nobody probably necessarily saw coming.
The unpredictability of the AI space.
I. It's just moved so fast and changed so quickly.
I think this. All this unpredictable unpredictability ultimately is going to leave a lot of room for health systems and health system leaders to kind of claim one of two positions. They're either going to watch all this change. They're going to claim to be victims of the environment. I don't know what happened. All this stuff happened to me. You know, woe is me, or they're going to see all these changes as they happen as an opportunity to accelerate the change that they need inside of their own health system.
So they're going to. They're going to climb on top of that change wave and they're going to surf it, and they're going to be awesome or they're going to get crushed by that wave. And I think we have some really great surfers in the CIO space, and I know these folks and I work with them regularly, not only them, but their teams. So I'm very hopeful we got some writers out there and they're going to take advantage of that. But is it's a ton of change coming?
[00:18:38] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. Well, as we wrap up here, I'm hopeful that in a year from now, we can do this podcast again. We can revisit, you know, this time, you know, these answers from this time and see what's changed. Right. And compare notes as to what the. The surfing is going to be like. Right.
And there's no doubt there's going to be some big waves that are out there, and it'll be interesting to see, you know, if that surf is constant or are there calm seas ahead. But, yeah, maybe we can only hope for a little bit of the boat, which would be great. But Drex, this was great. Thanks for joining today. Really appreciate your insight. Thanks.
And, you know, everything that you guys do at the 229 group.
So with that, that's it for today's episode of Health Data Talks. Thanks to Drex, to Ford for sharing your perspective, and thanks to everyone that's listening if this conversation resonated. Be sure to tune in for future episodes as we continue to examine how healthcare organizations keep their data and their teams and sync through the change. So thanks, everybody.
[00:19:48] Speaker A: That's it for this session of Health Data Talks. Check out helpful
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