Kevin Olson became the Chief Information Officer at Jupiter Medical Center in 2020 and was faced with finding solutions for a complex, fragmented healthcare technology landscape. In his conversation on The CereCore Podcast, he describes it as being “fragmented with a capital F.” He goes on to talk about how their Epic implementation goes beyond the technology but also requires attention to human behavior, standards, and governance for sound IT decision-making. In his conversation on The CereCore Podcast, Olson explains the importance of understanding market dynamics and why healthcare leaders need to have a solid understanding of AI, its practical uses and risks to providers and patients.
Listen to the full conversation and gain advice and strategic insights from Kevin Olson, a US veteran and healthcare leader with 20 years of experience and a deep commitment to serving others.
Read on for excerpts from the conversation with Olson where he shares his experience focusing on what’s really important to healthcare organizations, providers and patients.
Editor’s note: Responses have been edited for clarity and brevity.
People, processes and technology are important solutions for unifying fragmented systems for better patient and provider experience.
Olson: The Epic decision was pretty straightforward when you think about that experience for the provider and for the patient.
It's not so much a technology play, but it's more human behavior, following standards, processes. Because now you shine a light on those processes they've had to latch together over those multiple years. So that's probably been the biggest opportunity—I would say that's probably number one.
But then we also went into the AWS world. I think we were the first ones to go as direct non-prod and production into an AWS environment. Everybody else has done a transition from a migration standpoint of their legacy data center and so forth. So that was a little bit of a new one, but I think at the end of the day, I like where we're going.
This is where the CereCore relationship with JMC [Jupiter Medical Center]. We kind of fumble back and forth—what are we going to do with our contact center? We have to do something there because it's legacy. Well, CereCore went with AWS. We kind of learned from you guys, the good, bad, ugly of that. And so that's a recent development as well. So that's been a good partnership.
Governance is worth the time and effort, especially when you gain input from physician and nurse leadership and key stakeholders. IT spending is aligned with goals and needs and transparency in decisions builds trust.
Sobol: What are some of those non-EHR optimization IT investments that are top of mind for you? How are stakeholders involved in the process?
Olson: The one that pops into my mind right away is onboarding. So you want to get a physician or a nurse, whoever the caregiver is, to work top of license as soon as possible. We put in an identity management system that's integrated with our EHR certainly, but with our ERP, with ServiceNow, to automate as much as that as possible and allocate those resources to that person based on the rule.
I took a lot of input by the stakeholders—physician input, medical staff credentialing, nursing, the C-suite. So what I'm getting is the governance piece of this. Identifying those things that are really, really crucial and important to the business and be able to say, 'These are the ones we're going to focus on for this next year.’
In this case, we've got a new patient tower coming up. Well, what are we going to do there from a experience standpoint? In this case with identity management, it's being able to vet and say, ‘Well, this thing over here that has less of an impact on the pillars of the organization and can probably wait as we get this one that's really, really important for the provider.’
Understanding market differences and the technology that’s needed to compete is important but also realizing that the modern technology experience is common for both physicians and patients today.
Sobol: You've been a CIO across different types of health systems, academic, private, public, different geographic and regional markets. How have those differences influenced your leadership approach, your IT strategy?
Olson: There are some basic things that we all have that I think are important to a leader and CIO in a healthcare organization, regardless of the market. Like the ability to tell the stories to say, ‘Hey, we're doing okay over here.’ Infrastructure, for example, but we modernized the experience for the patient and the physician over here. Being transparent and able to share those stories of how we can improve things for folks.
I think it's important that you know what that competition can provide in terms of technology in the healthcare space and how do we leverage to the nth degree everything that we've invested in for the organization.
Evaluate the practical applications of AI and automation through collaboration with providers and key stakeholders and remain diligent in managing associated risks for patients, providers and the organization.
Sobol: What do you think leaders should really be paying attention with AI, automation, machine learning, cybersecurity and other hot topics of the day?
Olson: I signed up for an AI course not long ago. I'm deep into it just because I think having exposure to the models, not for the intent to develop a large language model with all this neural network, but to know the background of what this stuff does so you can speak intelligently about bias or hallucinations or whatever.
It is easy to bring in a solution without the governance and say, ‘Hey, this is going to be the greatest thing since sliced bread.’ That may be misidentified or not identified at all if they didn't have a solution. But manage that risk—because there's always a risk of anything you bring on—for the patient first for the provider and the organization. If these things don't work right, there's some exposure there.
It's easy to get caught up in the AI buzz, but I think having a little bit of a practical eye about what this stuff really is and what can it do I think is really important. Really important.
Listen for more
Stream the full episode to hear more insights and practical advice from Kevin Olson, CIO Jupiter Medical Center.
If you liked this episode, listen to this conversation with Dr. Patrick Woodard, CIO at Monument Health on the importance of balance as a healthcare IT leader. Check out this episode: Physician CIO on the Value of Clinical IT Support.
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