Laurie Wheeler, Chief Operating Officer, Information Services & Technology at MultiCare Health System, is a 25-year healthcare veteran who is all about optimizing processes and the change management needed for transformation.
At Constellation Research's Connected Enterprise, I caught up with Wheeler to talk about her role. Here are the takeaways.
Her role. Wheeler runs the business and operations of the IT organization at MultiCare Health System with a focus on process, finance, budgeting and contracts. "I'm an operator. I'm all about having a smooth machine running internally. I'm about the processes. That's my jam. We live in a world of technology but my big thing is optimizing it," said Wheeler. "I'm the 'now what' person. The CEO Council made a decision and I'll get it done."
At MultiCare Health System, Wheeler is a 25-year vet who has the relationships and the credibility to implement technology. She started as a front desk clerk.
Healthcare and new technologies. When it comes to AI, new platforms and technology Wheeler is happy to have the conversations. "But again, my passion is making these things reality. So, I'm really big on change management," she said. "At healthcare providers, the staff specialty is being at bedside. The last thing they want to think about is technology. Taking care of humans is just inherently different."
Finding project champions. "You need to find those champions in the operation because in healthcare technology is not the specialty. The specialty is taking care of patients so it's about finding a way to digest the technology and make it easy to adopt," said Wheeler. "I've worked in the organization a long time so I've developed a lot of relationships. We go out and meet with our hospital presidents, chief nurses and you find people that have a passion around technology while working in healthcare."
Building credibility with these technology champions is really about the follow through, said Wheeler. "You build relationships, build trust and people notice and call on you," she said.
2025 priorities. Wheeler said her focus going into the new year is optimizing a ServiceNow implementation. "ServiceNow is our employee resource center back end," she said. "We use it for our search, virtual agent and the goal is minimizing calls to the service desk. The problem is we don't have a lot of content. It goes back to making it easier for our healthcare workers to put in information."
ServiceNow is connected to Epic, an electronic health record system. Wheeler added that MultiCare also implemented a full ERP replacement with Workday covering HR, financials and supply chain. "It was quite an adventure," she said.
The healthcare technology dream. When asked what Wheeler would optimize if she had a magic wand, she said:
"It's the usability and functionality of Epic at the bedside. The last thing you want folks to do is messing around with your health record when they should be focusing on you."
In the last year, Wheeler piloted Nuance's Dax Copilot, which is ambient technology that aims to input information via voice and transcription. Nuance is now owned by Microsoft.
She said:
"I had an experience with my daughter, and we went to the doctor. He was a test subject, and he's like, let me put this on next to us, and it's going to record everything. It's going to put it in your record. They chat and things like that. When it's over I'm stoked because we're just piloting Dax and physicians like it. My daughter said it was very odd because the doctor looked at her the whole time. She has grown up only seeing a physician stare at a desktop to talk to her."
The future of ambient healthcare. Wheeler said AI will have a big role in healthcare to update records and handle various tasks. "The trick will be figuring out where to insert the human in quality control," she said. "We'll move that way because the experience is better and changes the workflow with the patient. The last thing a nurse wants to do on a break is spend five minutes on the service desk or record. The returns are time and customer experience."
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