The Grill: Indranil Ganguly

Computerworld - Indranil "Neal" Ganguly, vice president and CIO at CentraState Healthcare System in Freehold, N.J., says he and his colleagues in healthcare IT have an opportunity to make a real difference. CIOs and their teams have a strong grasp of what benefits technology can bring to the medical field, he says, and they should help shape healthcare policy. Ganguly is helping to do just that, serving in leadership roles with various trade associations. The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) last fall recognized his contributions by presenting him with its State Advocacy Award.

"As the healthcare industry enters a period of great change, it is more important than ever for CIOs to get engaged in the public policy process," he says. Here he shares more of his thoughts.

What has been the biggest change regarding the role of technology in healthcare during your 12-year tenure as CIO? That technology has been really ingrained in healthcare operations. When I first got here, when there was a network issue, it was an inconvenience. It was a hassle, but everything was manageable. Today it's mission-critical; the technology has become a key driver in supporting the care-delivery process.

Computerworld - Indranil "Neal" Ganguly, vice president and CIO at CentraState Healthcare System in Freehold, N.J., says he and his colleagues in healthcare IT have an opportunity to make a real difference. CIOs and their teams have a strong grasp of what benefits technology can bring to the medical field, he says, and they should help shape healthcare policy. Ganguly is helping to do just that, serving in leadership roles with various trade associations. The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) last fall recognized his contributions by presenting him with its State Advocacy Award.

"As the healthcare industry enters a period of great change, it is more important than ever for CIOs to get engaged in the public policy process," he says. Here he shares more of his thoughts.

What has been the biggest change regarding the role of technology in healthcare during your 12-year tenure as CIO? That technology has been really ingrained in healthcare operations. When I first got here, when there was a network issue, it was an inconvenience. It was a hassle, but everything was manageable. Today it's mission-critical; the technology has become a key driver in supporting the care-delivery process.

How did that change affect your job? It has increased the visibility of the IT function. Now everyone knows who the IT guys are. And that puts some unexpected pressure on the group that you have to find ways to relieve. The other change is demand. Look at the amount of technology we've deployed to our users, our customers. Before, they were simply accepting of the technology, but now the awareness of what technology can do for them has been raised to a point where they're asking for new technologies and enhancements. That's created a demand curve that's very steep, but our resources for providing that haven't increased as steeply. So the challenge for us as IT leaders is demand management.

You've talked about the importance of CIOs playing a role in public policy. Why is it important? CIOs shouldn't be just technologists. Most of us aren't. We're businesspeople who first and foremost understand how technology can impact the business. And we're seeing now the federal and state governments' drive to transform healthcare. We know that the large industry players, both private and public, are looking for ways to make healthcare delivery more efficient while trying to improve or maintain effectiveness, and they've pinned a lot of hopes on technology. But I think there's a gap between the theory of technology deployment and the reality of it, and CIOs are uniquely qualified to step up and educate the legislators, so they don't put out rules that are unattainable.

As a CIO and a business executive, what are the key skills you need? You have to understand the business of healthcare and how technology plays a role. The CIO's team touches the entire healthcare organization unlike any other healthcare executive. We're uniquely positioned to have that big picture of the organization. You have to be able to communicate complex concepts in an easy manner. You have to be diplomatic. You need discipline around demonstrating value. Those are some of the key skills as CIOs. How does it prepare us for the advocacy role? It all lends itself to that education mission.

The HITECH Act promotes "the adoption and meaningful use of health information technology." How do you define "meaningful use"? Very simplistically, being a meaningful user of technology means [answering yes to these questions]: Are you getting value from the technology? Are you getting value for patients, caregivers and the organization as a whole?

Have you achieved meaningful use in your own organization? We have. We attested for Stage 1 [under the federal HITECH Act] in September. I'm waiting for that big check to come. The calculations that were done by our finance folks show that we're entitled to $2.7 million, approximately.

What were the challenges to achieving that goal in your organization? The key challenges were around getting my customers, the end users, to come to the table to participate in implementing the technology. Most viewed it as, "That's IT's responsibility. Just tell me when you're done." But they now realize if they don't participate, the system isn't optimized to meet their needs. Then you have to change the culture, how they work on a daily basis, to maximize use of the technology. That's been the greatest challenge. An interesting side note to that: Sometimes changing culture means some people have to do more work than before and not realize the value themselves but see the value to the organization as a whole.

What about achieving meaningful use overall as an industry? What obstacles remain? At CentraState, we're fortunate to have kicked off a strategy and implemented a lot of technology before meaningful use came to be, so that put us in a good position. So I think that's one of the challenges for others. I think we're also seeing a growing shortage of skilled labor to get the work done. As more and more are pushing to implement technology, the pool of labor who understands the technology is being gobbled up. And that whole cultural change -- that's real, too. You've got to get these clinicians to buy into changing their work, and that's not trivial.

-- Interview by Computerworld contributing writer Mary K. Pratt (marykpratt@verizon.net)

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