Award-winning CIOs have got to be doing something right when it comes to management of their teams. Whether they take care of a small rural team of a sprawling department, the winners of Healthcare IT News 2016 Best Hospital IT Departments all have an approach that leads to happy staff and efficient operations. How do they do it?

 

Ed Kopetsky, CIO at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital and Stanford Children’s Health

“I set the tone, but I let others lead."

Kopetsky says it’s simple; the success of a unit or department comes down to the leader. He works along a partnership model where he and team members make decisions together. Development of people and an absence of micro-managing make a winning team, he says.

 

Chris Hickie, IT director at Osakaloosa, Iowa-based Mahaska Health Partnership

"Healthcare IT is a very stressful and high-stakes environment."

Hickie says keeping staff engaged with where they are working – a hospital, creates a productive sense of urgency. He makes sure staff are aware of how event the smallest IT issue can impact on the work of clinical staff.

 

Keith Neuman, CIO at Charleston, South Carolina's Roper St. Francis Healthcare

“Your job is hard to make other people's jobs easier.”

IT healthcare is a space of constantly changing priorities as staff work on one project one day and change over to another the next depending on shifts and changes. Neuman says this can be frustrating but adds that it is part of the nature of the job and that ”we're here to support the organisation."

 
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Bernie Clement, CIO at Thibodaux Regional Medical Center in Thibodaux, Louisiana

“Managing the size of everyone's plate is crucial.”

Clement works from the premise that, owing to its role in supporting the organisation, there is no shortage of work to be done on any given day in an IT department. He says that it is important to strike the right balance between taking on exciting, large-scale projects and the realistic limits of staff.

"We ride that line closely. We can do a lot of great things in IT.”

 

Kevin Lane, CIO at Illinois-based Silver Cross Hospital

“I like to spend as much time as I can with staff.”

Practising what you preach is the approach of Lane who says that leaders need to implement management by example. He also says keeping IT and hospital projects aligned with the overall strategic vision of the organisation is critical.

 

Sonney Sapra, CIO of Tuality Healthcare in Hillsboro, Oregon

“Rally together when things get tough."

Spara is firm that the key to staff happiness and a successful IT unit is support, trust and s good culture within the team. He is also a big believer in smaller budgets bringing out creativity and innovation. Long-term satisfaction is the aim. “Engaging people to do what they truly love gives them higher purpose and more happiness."

 

Source: Healthcare IT News

Image Credit: Dirk Beveridge


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