The traditional health system IT department runs on analysts and infrastructure specialists who build, configure and maintain the systems clinicians depend on. Will Landry, senior vice president and CIO at FMOL Health in Baton Rouge, La., thinks that model is becoming obsolete and has been spending more than a year trying to change it.
The shift he is pursuing isn’t primarily about headcount; it’s about what expertise his department leads with. Where FMOL Health’s IT team has historically been built around technical specialists — people who know the systems and can configure them — Mr. Landry wants a team built around workflow expertise that includes staff who can sit alongside clinical and operations colleagues, understand business processes and deploy technology rather than the other way around.
“Those skill sets are changing, and they’re changing pretty quickly as far as what’s needed,” he said during an interview with the “Becker’s Healthcare Podcast.” “We need to be way more focused on business systems, end-to-end workflow systems — being able to go in and being more subject matter experts where we’ve traditionally been, like, technology experts.”
The practical expression of that shift is what Mr. Landry calls the at-the-elbow model, moving IT staff off build work and onto floors and into clinics, working alongside clinical and operations teams to identify workflow problems and fix them in real time.
“We’re going to be probably less focused on build and more focused on at-the-elbow optimization with workflows,” he said.
The direction is clear. The execution has been slower. Structural changes to the IT organization have been made but the shift hasn’t moved at the pace the original plan called for.
“I’ve been talking about it with my senior leadership team now for over a year, and we’ve made some changes in our org structure, but nothing like we thought we would initially,” he said. “It is easier said than done, and you’ve got to find the right mix of moving pieces and moving strategy over time.”
Part of what makes the transition difficult is that the pressures creating the need for change are the same ones that limit its pace. Budget constraints tied to HR-1 and Medicaid changes are tightening. Self-pay volumes are rising and legacy systems and technical debt from earlier implementation years still demand the resources Mr. Landry would rather be redeploying his teams but the build work doesn’t disappear because the strategy has moved beyond it.
For a framework on navigating that tension, Mr. Landry looks outside healthcare, specifically to George Washington, for inspiration on strategic restraint. Mr. Washington fought and retreated from many battles before ultimately succeeding in gaining independence.
“It’s not about the battles,” Mr. Landry said. “It’s about the end goal. It’s about where you’re trying to get. And sometimes you have to take retreats. Sometimes you have to change.”
At the Becker's 11th Annual IT + Revenue Cycle Conference: The Future of AI & Digital Health, taking place September 14–17 in Chicago, healthcare executives and digital leaders from across the country will come together to explore how AI, interoperability, cybersecurity, and revenue cycle innovation are transforming care delivery, strengthening financial performance, and driving the next era of digital health. Apply for complimentary registration now.
