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Creating an Award Winning Clinical Team
Originally Published: Sep 26, 2023
YouTube Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OF9MV-5EKWo
Join us for an insightful interview with Becky Fox, RN, CNIO, Chief Nursing Informatics Officer at Intermountain, as we delve into her remarkable journey in the world of healthcare informatics. Becky will share her strategies for fostering innovation and collaboration within her clinical team, which have led to award-winning outcomes. She will also highlight specific achievements that showcase her team's contributions to clinical informatics initiatives. In a rapidly evolving field, we'll explore how Becky encourages continuous learning and professional development among the women on her clinical team to ensure they remain at the forefront of technological advancements and best practices.
Becky Fox, MSN, RN-BC, Chief Clinical Information Officer, Intermountain Healthcare
Janae Sharp, Founder, The Sharp Index
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Janae Sharp: I am really looking forward to discussing healthcare IT with Becky Fox, the Chief Clinical Informatics Officer at Intermountain Health. [00:00:36] Welcome to Health Impact Live Virtual, a monthly meeting where we meet with leaders and ask questions about running a successful team and advancing healthcare, making impact.
So, Becky, welcome. Do you want to introduce yourself to the audience?
Becky Fox: Sure. I'm Becky Fox. I'm a nurse by background and I am the chief clinical information officer at Intermountain Health where we're helping people to live their healthiest lives possible. Amazing.
Janae Sharp: I like that mission, like to live your healthiest lives possible.
Let's go back to what that means within the [00:01:12] framework of clinical informatics.
Becky Fox: Yeah, so, I joined the organization about 10 months ago, and one of the things that really jumped out at me when I met any of the caregivers that I interacted with, whether it was a frontline caregiver, bedside clinician or provider, pharmacist, you know, anyone in the organization, one of the things that was really drew me to the organization was that everyone really lives with.
Breathe and believes the mission. Everyone's very focused on it. And that also can be found in our informatics team. So every time that we get together, whether we're trying to solve a problem or [00:01:48] find a better way to do things, everyone's really driven by that mission to really focus on how do we bring improvement to the caregiver experience to the patient and family experience and you know how to make an impact in the communities that we serve.
Janae Sharp: Yes, that mission focus matters.
I would also like to know you've consistently led award winning teams and award winning projects, including just this last month you won the clinical informatics know the clinical leader of Utah hymns. So exciting. How do you do that? Is there like a method? Like, are you [00:02:24] like a
walking?
Tell us.
Becky Fox: You know, I, I've been really lucky that the teams that I've worked with and of course, you know, any award that you receive is, is, is wonderful recognition, but it really kind of reflects the work that there's many people behind the scenes at teams that put things in action. And so I was really proud to receive the award only because behind me.
And with me are a lot of other caregivers that make things really happen. And so our informatics team, as I mentioned, you know, we're really focused on that mission. So anytime that we are working through a project, we're trying to say, what is the best decision? Does, does the, whatever we decide today, [00:03:00] does it make us better than where we were yesterday?
You know, a lot of times we put in technology in place and sometimes it doesn't always go. As perfectly as planned. You know, we're all humans involved. We all, you know, come to the, come to a project and really put our best foot forward. But sometimes it's just, it's not smooth. It's not easy to adopt. It doesn't work exactly in the workflow.
And a lot of times we have to go back to the drawing board. We have to really listen to our clinicians. And that's the unique role of being a clinical informaticist is that you have to, you have to have one foot in the clinical world, one foot in the technology world, and you [00:03:36] really are there to.
Smoothie edges to make things easier for everyone.
Janae Sharp: Thank you. Tell me a little bit about how to build one of those teams. We've spoken in the past about like, how do you build a successful team? That's able to kind of look, you know. Smooth those edges.
Becky Fox: To me, the first thing to do is, you know, when when I joined Intermountain or any other informatics team that I've worked with in the past, the first thing you have to do is really kind of understand where your team is.
So the first thing out of the gate is really getting to know your teammates, hearing and Feeling what they're [00:04:12] really proud of what they've been experiencing with their history is of doing things and really do an assessment of the team to understand what their knowledge is, what their experiences, even what their diversity in their background might be.
So what I found to be really effective is diversity in thought and in experience. And then when you have different diverse you know, contributors around the table trying to solve a problem, you really can get to unique solutions. So, for example, that diversity might mean, you know, you had a teammate that worked in consulting, you might have had a teammate that worked in education and learning services and support [00:04:48] aspects.
You might have had a teammate that worked truly in build design aspects or app development. And when you bring all those folks together on a clinical informatics team, That's how I found is that you really can move things for forward in a creative and innovative way. So to me, building a culture of an informatics team, you really need to have those diverse experiences, those diverse thoughts around the table because technology is evolving really, really rapidly, especially now, now that we've come out of the pandemic, everyone is still trying to play catch up.
And take on real big projects and [00:05:24] do them in a quicker way. And so the way you have to be able to do that is you have to put everybody have an assessment of your team, make sure you set a mission and a vision for your team specifically around informatics, and then make sure you have diversity to contribute to the mission and the projects at hand.
Janae Sharp: Yes, you need unique perspectives. So tell me when you came to Intermountain, what was something unique at Intermountain that you found on your clinical informatics team?
Becky Fox: Yeah, I've had it. I've had a great I. T. Career been able to work with health care organizations from around the world. And one of the things that really, [00:06:00] really resonated with me was the investment that intermittent has made in their informatics team for many decades.
They understood the importance of really having people bridge the two worlds of clinical and I. T. And they've also made really strong investments. In having those informatics experts even on the floor. So we have a unique program called a shared clinical leader. And it's a group of about 150, 200 clinicians that actually carve out between four and eight hours a month to really help with the adoption of IT.
So even though we have a clinical informatics team, we also have these [00:06:36] shared clinical leaders that devote their time out of bedside care. But they can give the perspective of the unit. So they work with directly with frontline staff. They explain the new technology that's coming. They make sure that we have good adoption.
And most importantly, they're there to help us get feedback from the from the frontline caregivers, bringing it back to our informatics and our IT folks. And then again, we can go back and continue To evolve and optimize the technology that we put in place. So that to me is the secret sauce. We have these shared clinical leaders that really, you know, really embrace that role, really are [00:07:12] devoted to that role and really make a difference at our organization.
Janae Sharp: Yeah, creating with clinicians on the front lines as critical and also making it on your actual job, not just something you throw on top. Let's talk about a few of the things that are coming up because you're about to roll out Epic. We've all heard the news that I think people are wondering, what does that look like?
Is that just everyone's dream?
Becky Fox: It is definitely going to be a big project, but it's one that I'm confident that we will do successfully. You know, again, back to that, that mission always centers us. So even, [00:07:48] you know, when we're going to roll out a new EMR, or we're going to standardize to one EMR, that's a lot of work ahead of us.
And sometimes people might say, well, that's a pretty big. giant mountain to be climbing in a really short time frame. But what I would say is what we're going to do is leverage all of our experience from the past, really embrace our culture of driving towards the mission. And that is to bring things to our caregivers so that they can be the best when they're taking care of patients.
Janae Sharp: Yes. So tell me, while you're doing these massive projects, how do you stay ahead of innovation? How do you ensure that you're still, you know, [00:08:24] current and relevant and not, you know, going to be two years behind?
Becky Fox: Yeah, I like to call it just being right on the cusp. So for example, you know, as an informatics team.
You know, what my team and I have discussed is you always have to be evolving. So for example one of the unique things that Intermountain has is we have a safety informatics group. So we're focused specifically on safety. If a safety event occurs, whether it's with a product, whether it's with a workflow, whether it's with a system that we might have in place, we immediately have a team That's in informatics that can focus on finding out what the technology [00:09:00] challenges that might be.
And again, smoothing edges and bringing resolution very quickly and rapidly to the frontline caregivers. So that's again on a unique perspective that we have. And so we have to be really mindful of the fact that the organization is going to always continue to evolve and we have to be right on the cutting edge of that, you know, many I'm probably dating myself decades ago.
It was great to have a C M I O. And then everyone caught on and said, Hey, let's have a C N I O. And so now the perspective is we need to really look at the entire continuum that occurs inside and outside of a hospital. We [00:09:36] also need to look at all of the things that happen to. The caregivers. So, for example, I always say, you know, there's almost a patient can't come into your organization and not touch technology.
I mean, even to park in the parking deck, they have to get a ticket. It comes out of an electronic machine. There's technology involved. And so there's always some aspect of technologies that's touching our patients, that's touching our caregivers. And so our team has to be on that cutting edge. So as people talk about AI We won't, we won't shift our entire team to go focus on a I, but we will have a few folks that will become embedded in [00:10:12] projects or pilots that we will have a few teammates that we will send to conferences and really become educated and well versed in a I and then as those technologies continue to develop and be adopted into workflows, then our team will ramp up on that.
So that's again the great thing about having a diverse team. You can, you don't have to have Your entire team become an A. I. Expert. You just need a few folks in there. And then as that A. I. Continues to develop and evolve. Then, of course, you can share that that love and fun with everyone else.
Janae Sharp: Yes, that's, that's a great perspective. I was going to [00:10:48] ask you like how you decide like which technology to roll out, when to pivot people, when to hold back. Is that like a planned thing or is it just that you assign people different teams?
Becky Fox: Yeah, it kind of it kind of occurs naturally. So for example, even with our epic project, you know, we'll take a portion of our team.
They will be focused, you know, heads down 100 percent of the time on making sure that we really have the right workflows embedded in our epic rollout. There will be a part of our team that will be heads down, focused on the education, learning and engagement of our frontline caregivers to make sure everyone adopts [00:11:24] it and really understands how to use epic to its full potential.
And then we will have some members of our team that will be keeping the lights. It's on, but as we get closer to go lives, as we get closer to stabilization, we will gently bring other folks over to help and transition over to the team. And the same thing would hold true to any AI chat, GBT, ambient listening, ambient intelligence, you know, whatever new technology will be coming down the, down the pike.
That's what we will do. We generally put a few folks on it at first and then end up spreading it to the rest of the team and it kind of natural transition.
Janae Sharp: That makes a lot of [00:12:00] sense. Just to be able to have that freedom to learn.
So tell me, what are you looking forward to? In the coming months in healthcare and in your clinical informatics team.
Becky Fox: You know, one of the things I'm really looking, looking forward to is, you know, we have a variety of different EMRs and so right now it, it can feel pretty overwhelming to say, Oh, how are we going to consolidate everything to one, one system?
But what I really like in that is that it's a great opportunity for everybody to learn. To listen, to learn, and to collaborate together. And what I've found, you know, I'm sure like many other [00:12:36] organizations throughout the world, is, you know, the pandemic, if it taught us nothing, it's don't sweat the small stuff, we just have to work together.
It's okay if things aren't perfect, because we're all driven. To make it better. And so that's what I'm really looking forward to. So even though there's a big project at at hand and there will be other projects that that have to happen in parallel to that, what I'm really excited for is that it's an opportunity for our teams to really work together.
And when I say our teams, our informaticists to work with our operators, our facility leaders, our frontline caregivers, and really create something that's gonna be allow long lasting and make a difference to, [00:13:12] to everyone.
Janae Sharp: Thank you. I want to make sure to, as we close up, I want to make sure you have an opportunity to share anything you feel like we missed, or you feel like people need to know.
Becky Fox: Well, one of the things that I would share with anyone who's out there really evolving their clinical informatics team is we've done a pretty good job. Like I said, we've evolved from just having one clinician in the IT department to really now having You know, pretty robust and diverse teams that can come together and put new solutions in place and optimize projects and technology.
But what we really need to do the call to [00:13:48] action is we need to share these lessons outside the walls of our own organization. So that's what I'm really kind of stressing to my team is this whole networking needs to occur across the United States and around the world. So if someone at Mayo has you know, implemented a program and they've used it for thousands of patients or, you know, hundreds of caregivers.
Let's take those lessons learned and build upon that. If someone at another organization, you know, try something and it fails terribly, you know, let's all share that knowledge so that we can move and advance the ball in a different [00:14:24] way. And that's one of the things that I'm really excited about is. You know, we're we're we all have these great, you know, whether it's the social media platforms or coming to conferences and getting together in small groups, it's really important to share all the great successes that we've had the failures, the challenges, how we've overcome them, and more importantly, just to feel like you're not alone.
So that's what I would just say. Collaboration is key to making sure they were all advancing health care. And I'm really looking forward to in the next year or so that you know, we're going to be doing that and hopefully a lot. Thank you. More through health impact as well as other organizations. [00:15:00]
Janae Sharp: Well, thank you.
I'm grateful. I think that's so important to share what we know and help everyone move together faster and towards a healthier lives for everyone. Again, I want to thank you for your time.
It's always a pleasure to catch up and good to see you. I'm glad I get to hear about your work to build great teams.
Becky Fox: Awesome. Thanks so much for your time.
[00:15:36]