John Donohue serves as Associate Vice President of Corporate IS for Penn Medicine.
On May 3rd, John will serve on the panel "The Best Health IT Purchase We’ve Made in the Last Year" at Becker's Health IT + Clinical Leadership + Pharmacy 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 May 2-4, 2019 in Chicago.
To learn more about the conference and John's session, click here.
Question: What do innovators/entrepreneurs from outside healthcare need to better understand about hospital and health system leaders?
John Donohue: I think there are a few things that would be important for innovators and entrepreneurs to understand. The first is that the healthcare business model is very complex While it may look simple on the outside looking in, it’s complexities and nuances are challenging, particularly in academic medicine. I think the second thing would be around budget cycles and consensus decision making. My experience is that things typically take longer to get traction in healthcare, particularly if they are new or innovative on the IT side. Lastly, I think that innovators and entrepreneurs need to understand that health system leaders have to balance the need to manage large legacy systems with the need to be innovative. This balancing act requires some finesse.
Q: Healthcare takes a lot of heat for not innovating quickly. What's your take on this?
JD: I think that in some ways, healthcare IT is risk averse. Innovation typically comes along with some risk. For many years, successful healthcare IT leaders have focused on delivering reliable service with legacy systems like EHRs. Innovation requires a totally different mindset around initiating several projects and being willing to “fail fast” when not successful . It requires a dedication of resources that think in an innovative fashion. I believe that healthcare IT is getting better in this area as innovation can create some competitive differentiation.
Q: Can you share some praise with us about people you work with? What does greatness look like to you when it comes to your team?
JD: I am very fortunate to work with an incredibly collaborative IT leadership team. These folks are highly skilled and highly motivated. We have been together for a long period of team and that has really resulted in a “can do” type attitude. When we have challenges, we typically solve them collaboratively versus pointing fingers. We typically don’t have infrastructure issues or application issues, we have IT issues and it’s all hands on deck. From my standpoint, greatness looks like a collaborative effort to strategize and execute with a high degree of trust and respect.