Mary Anne Leach, CHCIO, Director of the Office of eHealth Innovation for the State of Colorado
On Thursday, Sepember 21, Mary Anne Leach will speak on a 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 Mary Anne's session, click here.
Question: Looking at your IT budget, what is one item or expense that has surprised you in terms of ROI? How so?
Mary Anne Leach: N/A
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?
MAL: One of my favorite interview questions is "tell us about your 'flat side,'" or what you're not so good at. It's always revealing. If candidates don't have one, or don't know what theirs is, they probably lack some degree of self-awareness and emotional intelligence. Another important insight is gained when they say something like: "Oh, I've never been on an IT project that failed". Either they aren't being totally truthful, they don't feel any shared responsibility, or they are not pushing the boundaries and innovating. In any event, that person is probably not the best fit for an innovative IT organization.
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 2-5 years ago but not anymore?
MAL: We just need to let go of scanning and faxing completely. They will still happen until we get absolutely everyone, everywhere, for everything on to EHRs. We all need to be sharing health information digitally, securely, discretely (for example via parsed CCDs, discrete lab values, etc.) and in ways that are incorporated directly into the "home EHR" and the providers' workflow. Health information exchanges and electronic health records are entering the next era, incorporating out-of-state events, electronic consent, data from medical devices and other patient-generated information in ways that allow us to most effectively manage care and costs.
Q: Tell us about the last time you were truly, wildly amazed by technology. What did you see?
MAL: The next wave of truly amazing technology will come from "smarter machines" finally arriving in healthcare. Analytics-driven machine learning, artificial intelligence, precision and personalized medicine will be truly transformative for our industry by making healthcare smarter, more precise, more powerful and ultimately more cost-effective.