David Bonnar, Former Health system Information Officer and Independant Business Consultant.
On Thursday, Sepember 21, Mr. Bonnar will speak on a Keynote panel at Becker's Hospital Review 3rd Annual Health IT + Revenue Cycle Conference. As part of an ongoing series, Becker's is talking to healthcare leaders who plan to speak at the conference, which will take place September 21 through September 23 in Chicago.
To learn more about the conference and Mr. Bonnar's sessions, click here.
Question: Looking at your IT budget, what is one item or expense that has surprised you in terms of ROI? How so?
David Bonnar: In most of my prior budgets across different companies, I was often surprised by the low ROI in terms of real value for my telecom expenses. I've seen huge costs for data circuits, managed or not, where I can't really say their value warrants the expense. Over the past few years, disk and compute power has become cheaper, while almost every other operations expense — except labor and third party provided vendor infrastructure (data circuits) — has become better, faster and cheaper. Big telecom companies seem to deliver less reliability with increased management expense.
Q: Finding top tech talent is always a challenge. Say a CIO called you up today to ask for an interview question that would distinguish the best candidates from the mid- to low-performers. What question do you suggest he or she ask?
DB: What are you passionate about?
Q: We spend a lot of timing talking about the exciting innovation modernizing healthcare. It's also helpful to acknowledge what we've let go of. What is one form of technology, one process or one idea that once seemed routine to you but is now endangered, if not extinct? What existed in your organization two to five years ago but not anymore?
DB: Paper faxing still exists, although it shouldn't. Another example is not a technology, but it's driven by it: lines of patients at the pharmacy shouldn't exist. Good use of technology and patient education or member incentives (yes, incentive) should make lines at the pharmacy obsolete — for all the dozens of reasons that we all know.
Q: Tell us about the last time you were truly, wildly amazed by technology. What did you see?
DB: I'm actually still stunned by the iPhone. Yeah, it's not "new," however it's still truly, wildly amazing what we can do with this thing (and its clones). Mobile can change the lives of our plan members, care providers and patients. We should make sure that happens.