Medical center CIO finds inflicting guilt on vendors works

Computerworld - A CIO might receive an MBA to master the finer points of IT management, but one tactic not learned in business school -- inflicting guilt on vendor reps to make sure their technology functions reliably -- can be effective, too.

Ask Walter Fahey, CIO at Maimonides Medical Center in New York. The 705-bed facility has undergone major network upgrades in recent months, using the services of longtime vendor Verizon Communications and its new Connected Healthcare Solutions group.

The network upgrades are designed to support electronic health records software that's being upgraded in coming months and the transmission of patient data to smartphones and other wireless devices used by doctors, he said.

In an interview, Fahey said he frequently brings vendor sales representatives, including those from Verizon, into a Maimonides operating room and delivers a little speech. Fahey explains how complex applications must run reliably on robust networks to provide critical electronic patient information at the proper time to doctors and nurses who are using sophisticated surgical instruments on patients.

"I bring the vendor reps in the operating room and tell them, 'Imagine if one of your relatives were here in surgery. Serious stuff. All this information has to be read, and it's really, really important stuff,' " he said.

Fahey isn't kidding. He said it can't hurt to inflict a little guilt on vendor reps to make sure they install technology properly and keep it running when needed. "Guilt works, because it's logical," he said.

Aside from his frank management style, Fahey has earned a reputation during his 14 years at Maimonides for being thorough and adept at the range of difficult tasks facing IT managers in hospitals. The biggest chore hospital CIOs face lately is wending through the administrative maze associated with recouping federal reimbursements under the stimulus bill for technology investments made by medical centers and doctors in electronic health records technology.

Most of the federal money won't be be seen until 2011, and CIOs as well as doctors are still waiting for federal officials to issue the rules for qualifying for the stimulus money, Fahey said. "It's frustrating work," he noted. "But in the long run, it's going to be beneficial." He estimated that in all, the center has invested $100 million in electronic health records technology going back to 1996, but the reimbursements will cover only a fraction of that total, he predicted.

Fahey, who holds a master's degree in business, sees his job as incorporating elements of management, accounting and technology.

For the technology portion, he has overseen Maimonides' upgrade of a Verizon fiber-optic network connecting two-dozen buildings over the past two years, giving the center more bandwidth to handle patient records, including medical images. For years, the entire network has been used, for example, to help doctors remotely diagnose stroke victims in emergency rooms via video streams. That way they can detect if a stroke has occurred based on patient speech and movement, which can help the doctor on-site quickly administer the proper medications.