Summer is flying by and I know we’ve had a lot of IS news – our Microsoft strategic partnership announcement came from PSJH President and CEO Rod Hochman, right on the heels of our Bluetree announcement and our rollout of Microsoft Teams to IS/Shared Services. We also had our big Swedish Epic go-live, Azure Orangewood transition kickoff, and numerous other projects our teams have been involved in. It’s a big summer for IS!
We shared the news of the PSJH-Microsoft strategic partnership within IS just ahead of the major system announcements, right as I was going on vacation with my family, so I wanted to share a few thoughts about what it means to IS and PSJH. I also want to share some organizational news related to the leaders I’ve been interviewing to lead for three areas of our evolved IS organizational model. (We shared this evolved IS structure at our June IS town hall.)
Let’s start with the Microsoft agreement. You may have seen that the Rod Hochman announcement and press releases mentioned partnering on a “next-generation site of care” with Microsoft. That is probably the least-developed part of our partnership. In the immediate term, PSJH expanding our use of Microsoft solutions will help simplify our work, modernize or systems, provide a better experience for our caregivers (IS and PSJH) and ultimately our patients, as well as lay a groundwork for future innovation.
The agreement to embrace foundational Microsoft solutions, from identity to endpoint device management, as well as continuing to embrace Office 365, Dynamics, and other leading cloud-based tools reduces our overly-complex stack, lowers the vast number of contracts we have for solutions, and makes our system more secure and easy to manage. The work we’ve already started with Project AzureEye to transition our physical data center footprint to the cloud and embrace PaaS will continue and will accelerate our necessary move to the cloud.
Ultimately, it’s going to be more manageable for us as IS caregivers, more streamlined and convenient for our caregivers, and more secure and cost-effective for PSJH.
I’ll plan on sharing a bit more about the partnership and the work we’re doing with Microsoft toward developing the “Modern Workplace” with Ryan Klein, VP of Collaboration and Program Operations, on our August 9 IS Open Forum call, so I hope you’ll join us.
Before I left on vacation, I was finalizing the selection of three executives we have mentioned were being recruited to lead two of our new “vertical orgs” (Administrative IS functions supporting groups like HR and Finance, as well as the new Strategic Technology Enablement function supporting emergent areas of business focus for PSJH) and our “horizontal org” supporting IS Strategy and PPMO across all lines of business.
I will let you read the more complete announcement (article #2 in this IS Update) with details on each new leader, but want to give a warm welcome to Doug Lewis, GVP of IS Administrative Technologies (starting Aug. 19) and Ivette de Rubens, GVP of IS Strategies and Project Management Office (starting Sept. 3), as well as congratulate Chris Briggs on his exciting new role as GVP, Strategic Technology Enablement (stepping into new role on Sept. 3). We’re working on what this will mean for the groups currently reporting up into Chris’s IS Business & Consulting Services, and how we’ll divide some resources between existing teams and the two new verticals we’ve created. My leadership team is working to ensure this process is as smooth as possible.
Related: See the IS verticals and horizontals of the evolved IS organizational model.
In the meantime, please continue to engage me, my exec team, and each other on our IS Open Forum Yammer group. I’m on there often and love seeing the conversation, weighing in, and answering your questions. I’ll share some of my recent Africa vacation photos on there, so be on the lookout.
I enjoyed chatting with our Orangewood caregivers at their recent summer barbecue and will be at the Renton event on Aug. 1, followed by the Portland one on Sept. 11. If you’re at either of those upcoming events, try to find me and introduce yourself if we haven’t yet met.
Enjoy your summer, and thanks for your engagement and optimism around the bright future for our work in IS.
B.J.