Sharing the Clinical Business Intelligence Journey: ThedaCare Leaders Reach In and Reach Out

There have been lots of “ahas” already about clinical business intelligence. One is that there is no clinical business intelligence standard for the way that resources are organized or work is prioritized, or the importance of information flow within an enterprise. As a result, everything that every one of these organizations is doing is leading-edge; there’s no model to follow, and we have no idea what best practices look like in clinical business intelligence.

How big will you get as a collaborative?

Just as big as there’s interest. What we’ve found is that we’ve had far more interest than was anticipated. We’ve had people knocking down our doors with interest.

What would your advice be for CIOs and CMIOs reading this, who might want to pursue clinical business intelligence development and performance improvement work?

My number-one observation is that healthcare treats its data as though it’s a burden rather than an asset. People have to collect it and use it, but don’t know what to do with it. So as a CIO, you should first realize that data is an assert for which you are responsible. And how does a healthcare organization treat an asset? It treats it as a resource, and builds a strategic plan around it. And by leading that process, you will demonstrate your value to the organization. There is no value to IT unless it’s used strategically in an organization. So this concept of asset management or leveraging, I think, is the key to the potential impact of clinical business intelligence.

In my opinion, the success of the IT department as a whole but especially in the clinical business intelligence work, should be around how fast and well people are able to do their work. There’s no purpose to finance, either, except to support the work of the organization. Everything really should be focused on removing waste and improving overall quality and efficiency. As a CIO—and my background is in IT—I was in charge of applications development—the only way, I think, to show your worth, is to go out and understand what your customers are trying to do, and then to go out and get that done.