Moving Towards the New Healthcare: The Scottsdale Institute's Donald Wegmiller Shares his Long-Term Perspectives

Yes, absolutely. And when all the interviewers were asking what might happen during the election campaign, if Romney were elected versus Obama reelected? And everyone said, it won’t matter, because we’ll all be doing the same thing, anyway.

I think finally that the healthcare culture is beginning to change.

Yes, it’s beginning to.

And physicians are finally understanding what’s going on, as they’re being guided towards understanding the new accountability and transparency in healthcare, and their role in it, don’t you think?

Absolutely, yes, the physicians are being made accountable, but we’re also helping them through those dashboards and other tools [to improve performance]. And I think things really began to move faster when physicians began to come into the c-suites to explain to the suits what needed to be done to bring the doctors along. And it wasn’t about compensation, it was about that discussion about culture and alignment. And the suits finally listened. And now we’re doing the same thing with bringing chief nursing officers into the c-suite for the same types of discussions. So are we there yet? Not yet. But we’re probably five years away from the tipping point where everybody does that. And again, I think this is one of the most exciting times in healthcare, because I think we can really make a difference with the costs that payers are paying us. And we have way more resources than clinicians and patient care organizations in any other country, so they should stop complaining!

What should CIOs, CMIOs, and other healthcare IT leaders be doing right now to prepare for the transition to the new healthcare?

First of all, it’s clear that information systems and information technology are absolutely essential to success in this entire venture. So they first need to make sure that all of their folks—everybody in the IT environment—the network managers, for instance—understand what our long-term goal is, and understand how we have to be in a leadership position to get there. They should say to their teams, we want to hear from each of you what is a better, faster way to do what we’re doing now. And every year, I want to hear one idea from each of you as to how do that. And however critical a CIO or CMIO might be, we need to know that the entire enterprise that they command is moving forward, hopefully ahead of everyone else. And next, make sure that everybody has much inter-connection with the clinicians as possible. Sp they should spend as much time as possible with the clinicians, and learn what they do. We need to understand what the clinicians need to do their jobs best; they’re the ones who provide the care.

And when you combine a new culture of transparency with the IT tools, you can really create change, right?

Yes, and it takes the leadership in any organization to make every person in the entity feel that they can post an idea as to remove impediments. And the CIOs and CMIOs in this area of IT and information systems, need to be the leaders to change the culture. And not everyone is built that way; and some will have to be rewired, and some will have to be replaced, but the majority will say, sure, yeah, I’ll do that. So I think it will take five years, but things are happening. And it’s a great time to be in healthcare.

What is in the future of the Scottsdale Institute?

As long as we keep the culture of candor, transparency, sharing, and collaboration, Scottsdale will always be a spot where people will feel comfortable to share, and then we’ll continue to encourage progress. So I’m very bullish on SI, because we have the right members and the right culture.