Speaker 0 | 00:08.640

Hi, nerds. I’m Michael Moore hosting this podcast for Dissecting Popularity Nerds. I’m here with Deyoun Johnson, Director of Information Technology at Clearwater Cardiovascular Consultants. Well, that’s a mouthful. How are you doing there, Dion?

Speaker 1 | 00:21.106

Oh, well, how are you doing?

Speaker 0 | 00:22.707

Very good. Hey, I’m going to start us off with the icebreaker segment, Random Access Memories. I ask a question. And then you respond with the answer that comes to your head first. So your first question is, if you could design your own IT themed emoji, what would it look like? And what would it mean?

Speaker 1 | 00:43.574

Wow, that’s a good question. I guess I’ll be it’ll be a dinosaur. Right. So a T-Rex. Right. So we can plow through anything, you know, plow through any help desk issues. Right. So.

Speaker 0 | 01:01.620

I like that. You know, right. Maybe you can arm them with a, like a headset. And, uh, right. The problem is the one thing about the T-Rex is though, right. Is they always have the small arms, right? So they’ve got this menacing everything, but they got really, really tiny arms that they have. So, um, you can imagine it’s gotta be really hard to type for them.

Speaker 1 | 01:25.453

Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Speaker 0 | 01:28.535

Don’t you just. maybe we just give them like you know extensions that they can use um all right if you could travel back in time and meet any it legend who would it be and what would you either ask or

Speaker 1 | 01:46.430

show them wow um of course that would be um wow um tim cook yeah tim cook all right all right what do you mean and what would you ask or show tim cook when you when um i will ask him how he got you know how he you know you know these pointers are you know getting um his uh um you know his uh project started you know how he did it you know uh you know rhyme or reason between between everything that he did and um just basically uh tap into all his knowledge basically

Speaker 0 | 02:25.196

Well, I mean, that would be an interesting one to get him before he blew up. You know what I mean? Exactly right. Let me pick your brain really quick. Probably jump in and grab some Apple stock while you’re at it, right? Exactly.

Speaker 1 | 02:42.823

There you go.

Speaker 0 | 02:46.464

Lucrative. You’re very, very lucrative.

Speaker 1 | 02:48.785

Exactly.

Speaker 0 | 02:50.666

What is the most outdated or. obsolete IT-related term or concept that you still see people use or you hear out there?

Speaker 1 | 03:08.758

Reimage, right? I don’t know. I mean, I don’t know if that’s obsolete or anything like that, but reimage. I mean, because when I think of reimage, I think about, for me, way back when we had to get the disc and… go through each computer and put the disk in and have it put the operating system on the actual device you know i mean so so when i think of that um you know so i don’t think it’s either obsolete but for me i think that’s a concept that is uh definitely obsolete now we don’t have to do that anymore right with using those discs and going through there you know i mean you could use usb or so on and so forth now to the cloud or you know those guidelines so

Speaker 0 | 03:51.060

Definitely an archaic way of doing things. Yeah. You know, I think it’s one of those terms that has evolved over time,

Speaker 1 | 04:02.586

right? Exactly. Yeah.

Speaker 0 | 04:04.147

You know, it’s like you contributed to, you know, they finally started changing the save icon from the floppy disk, right? You know? Yeah, right. But, you know, we got to change this thing because nobody knows what it actually is anymore. Exactly. But, you know, it’s one of those things where… it started one way and it just keeps going right right the um i actually uh and and i and listen if this turn people i you know i challenge everyone to go google this and actually figure it out if it’s actually true or not but um i had heard one time that um the term dashboard uh uh or um or you know the dash that that they that they have in in the car and stuff like that um was actually um uh was actually like from when they used to put a board up when there was horses to prevent like the mud and stuff from uh from getting in there and again i don’t know this is what i heard right i haven’t verified it uh it’s a great story if it’s true um uh but i would uh i would encourage people to go uh see and actually get get the actual uh um factual things behind that but that but that kind of concept where we use something uh like horsepower you know and and it just keeps going um i think that that’s a uh it’s kind of an interesting uh um evolution of just technology like we got past it but everyone likes this term so let’s just keep adapting it

Speaker 1 | 05:35.086

Right.

Speaker 0 | 05:37.147

So, man, I’m so glad that, you know, we scheduled this podcast and that I have a chance to talk to you because you have a story that I am so interested in. I came across and I joke with everybody that I go out and I try to find as much about the people I’m interviewing as I can. And you’ve got you’ve got a lot of stuff out there. One of the things I found was a news article from the Cherokee Nation Tribal Magazine. And then in that, it talks about a journey that you had that was really inspiring. Very inspiring. Right. You started off in the military, right? And what branch of the military?

Speaker 1 | 06:29.395

I was in the Army.

Speaker 0 | 06:30.896

Army. All right. Army. And so. uh um in the uh in the army right uh you you actually got um you in the article you loved the army you actually loved what you did in the army and by the way what did you do in the army so that everyone knows uh i was in communications and then navigated to it so i can do i can elaborate on that too but uh

Speaker 1 | 06:53.839

um but yeah originally i was actually a mechanic in the army so i actually yeah so i i was a 63 Bravo. Now they call it what a 91 Bravo. I think they call it now. But but later on through the years, I actually was was chosen to be on this project to reimage. We’re just talking about reimage. Right. So. So I had this one particular IT specialist that was in the army showed me how to reimage. I had to reimage a whole entire brigade and I took a niche to it. And then from there, I just took off from there. So and then went from there and was in IT ever since in the military.

Speaker 0 | 07:37.564

So now you’re in this. You actually got injured. Yeah. So much so that you couldn’t continue. Right.

Speaker 1 | 07:45.068

That’s correct.

Speaker 0 | 07:46.569

All right. So so when that happened, you had no choice but to leave the military.

Speaker 1 | 07:54.674

That’s correct.

Speaker 0 | 07:55.654

Right. And when you left the military, you. I essentially had to go, OK, well, now I’m a civilian and now I have to do I have to do I have to do what civilians do. Right. So your next step here, right, is you go to college.

Speaker 1 | 08:14.464

That’s correct. Yeah. Yeah. So I went to college, you know, so, you know, I was in the military, too, you know, as I was in IT in the military. It was very difficult to, you know. you know, because you’re constantly deploying back and forth. So I’m just doing online classes at that period of time, you know what I mean? So when I, but when I, you know, initially, you know, retired or I got out of the military from being injured, yeah, I had to go back to college. And it was a, it was a, you know, a shock for me, you know, a little bit of a shell shock for me to, you know what I mean?

Speaker 0 | 08:59.194

a little bit different than being in the military right so and i had to i uh definitely had to adapt so it’s apropos uh military fun there by the way with the shell shock so uh so um so then the uh um so then you go ahead and you you go into uh um college or continue college right um you know what now you’re already doing i.t in the military Um, so I guess that kind of contributed to, uh, picking of your, of your major and what you’re going to do, right? Yeah.

Speaker 1 | 09:36.889

Yeah.

Speaker 0 | 09:37.609

What was the major that, uh, that you did in college?

Speaker 1 | 09:42.371

So initially, uh, when I went into college, uh, I was, I wanted to go into the cybersecurity realm. All right. So that’s where I wanted to go. Um,

Speaker 0 | 09:51.535

the most popular choice of everybody. You know,

Speaker 1 | 09:56.137

my eyes set was on, uh, Cybersecurity, I was just, yeah, I’m gonna go in. But when I started, I mean, I went through my first semester and I was like, you know what? You know what? This might not be what I want to do. You know. So what I did was I’ve always was interested in health care. You know, I’ve always been there as an health care. But, you know, but for me, I was never really, you know, I didn’t being a nurse. I know that’s something I probably could never do with blood. I didn’t. all those different things are a position anything like that so um i walked past this bulletin board and it said hey you know have you ever thought about going to health it and i said whoa now that is a good uh uh idea i never thought about doing anything like that so um and then you know and i investigated it more so my major was i was in health informatics So I have a health IT health informatics degree now.

Speaker 0 | 11:00.693

So that is such an amazing degree. You know, health informatics. I mean, first of all, let’s start with health care IT, because, you know, as we kind of chatted beforehand, I did in health care IT. And it is some of the most what we talk about cybersecurity for a minute. Right. Oh, my goodness.

Speaker 1 | 11:25.203

Right.

Speaker 0 | 11:26.200

Left and right. I mean, we poured so much effort and time into cybersecurity. It was a number one focus within the organization. And we were constantly improving and working on things on that regard. It was one of the items that was top on the list of the place I worked at. And I’m sure you’ve probably experienced the same thing. Oh, yeah. When it comes to healthcare, HIPAA and high tech, I mean, it’s so good of a security framework that you can even port it to other places and you can just change it and say, instead of EPHI, use confidential information or use just regular. personal identifiable information, right? PI, just use that. And that’s such a great framework if anybody wants to be secure because it just forces you. You know, it is an amazing, and not only does it do that, it forces you to keep cybersecurity policies up to date, right? And I mean, it’s just a living, breathing framework. I’m a huge fan of it. And I think when it comes to frameworks, that one they got right. But health informatics, using, you know, figuring out how to actually get data out of health care systems. What a challenging, challenging thing to do here. There are so like so we can talk about. we can talk about EHRs, right? Each one differs. Each one’s completely set up differently. Even the ones that are the same are set up differently, right?

Speaker 1 | 13:28.869

Oh, yeah.

Speaker 0 | 13:30.490

So let’s talk. We’re going to talk about this in a bit. I’m going to come back to this. I’m going to swing back because I think we have a lot to talk about here. But I want to finish your story, right? Because I think it’s a big one. So you do health informatics, which is not an easy… uh um uh not an easy career uh sorry college choice uh um and not an easy career either then you um graduate upon graduating uh or was it so when did you uh there was a conference you attended was that uh pre-graduation or post uh pre so oh yeah okay so let’s back up yeah talk about this hymns conference you

Speaker 1 | 14:11.568

So this HIMSS conference, a huge conference, health IT conference, I go every year. Great, great conference. One of the biggest conferences that worldwide, you know, huge conference. So basically what happened was, is that I was reached out to, I mean, to be a, to a lot of people, a lot of my peers that were in. at our university we reached out to in our program was reached out to and you had to be chosen to be part of that uh program assistant program right so what they do is they they um supply you they bring you out um put you into a hotel and you you help out uh and you are a assistant to a lot of the different booths and everything in those guidelines but i use that as a uh um, as a, uh, a networking platform for my next career too. You know what I mean? And that’s what the, and that’s what they would like for you to do too, as a program assistant, it gives you a chance to be part of that realm that gets you started.

Speaker 0 | 15:19.460

And being chosen that that’s essentially several thousand dollars of free, uh, stuff because you have to pay for the conference. So you no longer have to pay for the conference, right? You, uh, they fly you out. to wherever the hymns conference is at that time, put you up in a hotel, right? And did they give you a food stipend at all?

Speaker 1 | 15:41.296

Food stipend, food was included, yeah.

Speaker 0 | 15:45.960

Yeah, this is like winning a prize.

Speaker 1 | 15:49.202

Yeah, it was great.

Speaker 0 | 15:50.823

Even better, right?

Speaker 1 | 15:51.964

Yeah, it was great. You know, I think the only thing I didn’t have to pay for was the flight. I had to pay for the flight.

Speaker 0 | 15:58.029

But let’s, you know. That’s probably if you had to pay for anything, that’s probably the best thing to pay for, honestly. Right.

Speaker 1 | 16:04.914

Yeah, but it was great. You know, and it was an honor, too, that I actually was chosen. I was really surprised that I actually got chose to do it. You know, so it definitely caught me off guard that I was actually even chosen. You know, it’s one of those things is, oh, you know, I’ll put in for it. But if I don’t get it, you know, one of those things. Well, when I was chosen, I was very excited when I was chosen.

Speaker 0 | 16:25.871

So so you get you get chosen for this conference. Yeah. And you would start to attend this conference. And there’s and as you’re going to conference, not only is a great conference good for networking stuff, but there are two notable events that happened there for you. Right. One being one being that you meet somebody that, you know, that was very influential. Right. And who is that first person that you met?

Speaker 1 | 16:57.745

The first person that I met was. I still talk to today is actually one of my really good friends now. She’s one of the VPs there at HIM. So really, really great person. Actually, the thing is, there’s a lot of great people I met during that conference. That person, and I also met another person, and I’ll elaborate on that person here in a little bit once we get to that point, because I think you’re going to go there. for that in that area and then the other person is um i mean i can you know i can probably elaborate it’s magic johnson so but i will magic johnson yeah so what what was it like to

Speaker 0 | 17:45.411

uh to meet magic johnson uh um because i mean what what what an inspirational guy i um tell me about that experience so um

Speaker 1 | 17:56.703

So before that conference, you know, I was like, you know what? I am. I knew that the keynote speaker, one of the keynote speakers was going to be Maddie Johnson. I said, you know what? I’m going to get a Maddie Johnson jersey. So I went and got a Maddie Johnson jersey. And I said, my goal was to try to get that sign. And, you know, you never know. There’s thousands and thousands of people. You know, there’s no way. Maybe I will. Maybe I won’t. You know. It won’t happen. So what happened was, is that the last day, Magic Johnson was the keynote speaker for the for the the hymns conference. He called me out, you know. So basically, Magic Johnson is a great guy. He was, you know, he didn’t stay on the podium. So when he was giving his speech and everything. So he walked down, he said, I’m not going to stand up here and do my speech from here. So he goes and walks. around the auditorium. This auditorium is huge. This is in Las Vegas. One of the big conference centers there, you know, he’s walking around the auditorium and I have my Magic Johnson jersey and I’m just shaking it. Like, yeah, Magic. Yes, yes, yes, yes. You know, you know, so he can try to see me, you know what I mean? And, and then he looks at me. He said, you know what? I’m going to sign that. I’m going to sign that jersey for you before you leave. Then he keeps on walking and I think he starts thinking, he’s like, you know what? Come up here right now. I said, huh? What? You know, so I’m going to find this huge auditorium, going in front of this huge auditorium and I’m taking my, you know, my jersey up there to him and he signs my jersey and he says, you know, no, he takes my jersey and tells me to go back and sit back down. I said, okay, okay, he’ll get it after the. And then he thanks again. I was like, okay. He said, you know what? Come back up here again. So I went back up here again. And he signs my jersey. And he signs my jersey. He said, I don’t want anybody to take this from you. And the whole auditorium was laughing. They thought it was hilarious. And he said, you know what? Before you sit down, let’s do a fist bump. not a chest bump wasn’t a fist bump it was oh chest bump i’m sorry you’re right chest bump so he said so we did a chest bump so this guy’s six foot nine i can’t believe this guy was a point guard be honest with you so you know i mean but but you know big guy so we do a chest bump and i go back to the uh and i go back and sit down so but after that so the great thing is too i’m sitting in the front row um after that i was able to catch him after the uh after the keynotes uh after his session, his keynote speaking session that he had. And he was able to talk to me about an importance of business, your drive, and staying focused on things that you want, you know what I mean, and your goals. He had a really great, when he spoke, that’s one of the things he spoke about was more or less talking about what kept him no because right now in business he’s one of the biggest you know he has one he he’s one of the biggest businessmen you know from the sports you know from sports that you know that we’ve ever seen from sports i know recently he’s just uh purchased uh watch the the washington commanders now so uh yeah yeah the transition and i always still think about what he told me then about um you know keeping strive for your goals and everything those guidelines because at that period of time you know you know, I still hadn’t even graduated yet. I didn’t graduate yet. I was still getting there. And I was in the, I was in the SQL database class and I was sitting there smacking my head. Myself across the head.

Speaker 0 | 21:40.184

And that’s a bear. Oh, SQL database. I remember SQL database class when it was just,

Speaker 1 | 21:47.669

uh, yeah, that was,

Speaker 0 | 21:48.950

that was a rough one.

Speaker 1 | 21:50.311

Yeah, that was a rough one. So, um, but yeah, so, but it was great. That was a, you know, for me, that was one of the, you know, meeting him and. And just some of the things that he said, when it comes down to staying focused, no, no matter what gets in your way, you know, because, of course, my period of time to, you know, dealing with things with my family. My father that period of time was, you know, he was he was at that period of time he was dealing with Parkinson’s. My father passed away and I was dealing with all that. at that period of time also too he died in 2019 so sorry to hear that yeah in 2018 i was i actually really didn’t even know that i was going to you know trying to finish school and deal with my father and trying to make sure that he was good and and everything like that you know i you know it was a it was tough you know i mean so but for me you know to speak to him and him to you know uh you know you know explain to me some of the things that he had went through you know uh and how he kept focused you know really helped me too to get through you know college and uh and get to and actually took until this day i still i still use some of the things that he that he told me and talked to me about so wait what a remarkable thought um you

Speaker 0 | 23:16.418

know and the question is is uh imagine how many people he has motivated kept going just by just by having these these talks and and uh chest bumping right so to speak right what i mean you would imagine uh um you know you were you were dealt a very difficult hand um and and uh during this process uh you know you were given a chest bump from an influential uh magic johnson uh and it and it literally gave you uh the boost it looks like to to to move past it um wow what a challenging time and and yet uh you know you were you were given a little spark to kind of go on and fun fact i can tell you a fun fact too my father’s name is irving johnson are you kidding me are you

Speaker 1 | 24:11.532

wow irving lee johnson though so but that’s still what i mean and that’s my dad’s favorite player of all time you know so you know

Speaker 0 | 24:22.670

Oh, wow. OK, well, that that really just makes the story that I mean, that really is right. I don’t think I could get any more. So. All right. So this happened in this. It was an article, like I said, that that I read out there. But but there was another article that came out that was that was actually from the school that you graduated from. What was that school, by the way?

Speaker 1 | 24:47.867

Georgia Southern University.

Speaker 0 | 24:49.469

Georgia Southern University. they give you a little uh give them a little rep here they they did they’re good so um so they wrote uh a piece about you yeah um and and the i you know there was some of the similarities in it But there was kind of an extra piece on it, which was you left and you landed a dream job coming out. Let’s talk about what job you landed coming out of this.

Speaker 1 | 25:19.043

OK, so, you know, this is all during the conference. This is literally happened right after I had just, you know, finished speaking with Magic Johnson. All right. So that was the last day of the conference. I had spoke to so many people and that worked that whole, the whole entire conference for that whole entire week had a lot of job offers that, that, that, that I was offered at that period of time. And in a lot of, but you know, the one of the big, at that period of time, one of the places I really wanted to work at was at Cerner, right? I wanted to be at Cerner. I mean, you know, if, you know, if you’re familiar with any, the EHR systems, um Epic Cerner there’s a lot of other ones the key players out there too but sorry it is one um the biggest key you know they’re one of the bigger EHR systems out there uh which is Cerner so uh and um they uh and I really wanted to be with them at that period of time they were you know Epic and Cerner were like one two three to each other uh I don’t know what those stats are now but but uh and I know that they’re with Oracle now but at that period of time I was I really wanted to I was able to speak to a lot of people, but didn’t get a chance to speak to them. So I was a little down. So I went back up to the showcase room area and I’m walking around and I’m running to this random person. Right. You know, Cerner was packing up. They’re getting ready to leave. Their booth was getting ready to leave and everything. So I wasn’t able to speak to anyone there when it comes down to that. So I talked to this random person about. this person, he just kept talking about life, you know, about, he’s talking about his kids, I was talking about my kids, you know, we were talking about how, you know, I was talking about, I was talking to him about my military career, you know, a lot of different things that I had done, you know, you know, in my career, and at that period of time, trying to get through school, and what I were, you know, where I wanted to go, and everything, and it was a really good, great conversation. And, um, what ended up happening is, you know, so I had my card, he had his card, you know, at that period of time, my card was, uh, I just had my, uh, college that I was going to at that period of time and my contact information there. And he hands me his card and, uh, I looked down at it and I see, you gotta be kidding me. It was one at that period of time, one of the major executives there, sir, you know? So, uh, you know, he. Yeah, one of the major executives there at Cerner. And he said, I’ll tell you what, I really like you. You know, I really like you. I love your story. I love that, you know, thank you for serving our country. Everything you do, I mean, you know, your family and everything. And he said, I’ll tell you what, I want you to work for me. I want you to work for my company. And I said, you know, at that period of time, I said, yeah, okay, whatever. So I promised you, yeah, I want you to work for Cerner. I want you to work. I want you to be part of my company. So at that period of time, so I’m, and I remember, you know, he said, well, tell you what, I said, you don’t believe, so he takes me to a recruiter. I said, listen, I want you to take this guy’s information. I want him to be part of CERN. I want him to be part of our team. So he said, I’ll tell you what, and I hadn’t even graduated yet. So we’re talking, this is March timeframe. So I didn’t graduate until December. So at that period of time, you’re like, yeah, you know, at that period of time, you know, you’re. You’re still I’m still like, you know, hopefully he remembers me by the time I graduate. You know, so I did. I reached out to him. No, long story short, I reached out to them probably in that October time frame. And sure enough, he remembered me. You know, he said, hey, you know, how you doing? You know, it was just great. And then, you know, he linked me up to he linked me up to the recruiter. They flew me out to Kansas City. Showed me around and everything. The rest is history. I remember on December, on the day of my finals, last day of school, Cerner called me and offered me the job.

Speaker 0 | 29:40.437

Wow. I mean, that, I mean, what a story. The amount of, like, trails of luck you needed to get to.

Speaker 1 | 29:52.567

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 0 | 29:53.708

We say that, too, but you also did things. to put yourself in that position so that you can capitalize on the luck that you got. Right. And that’s what I want to make sure people actually realize too, because You know, yes, we do require a little bit of luck in our lives to get to where we are. Right. But there are there are lots of different pieces in there where you maximized, you know, all the things that you could possibly do so that when luck happened, you could strike big. Right. And and the items were there. Right. Which were you’re proactively going out. you know, working hard at your military, um, you know, when you did unfortunately have a setback there, um, you turned around and poured that energy that was coming from your military straight into, uh, finishing up college and, uh, and get, you know, and, and working on something that you love, which is fantastic. Right. Yeah. As you, as you pour your soul into that, you’re proactively looking out. Okay. How do I network? How do I get how do I find, you know, put myself in a situation that will help me kind of go forward? You arrive at a HIMSS conference, which you said, well, why not? I just go ahead and, you know, see if I can gamble and get my my head. So it’s not going to cost me anything, you know, to do that. And you did you actually got in as a for them to help you pay for it, to get there. You arrive at this conference, meet several people that are influential in your life. including Magic Johnson, right? And then the executive from Cerner, who gets you right into the position that you’re looking to get into using your health informatics degree. I mean, what a story.

Speaker 1 | 31:49.183

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 0 | 31:50.884

That’s remarkable. Okay, so let’s talk about your journey. And and how let’s talk about health informatics and how you started to apply it at Cerner. Right. Because I think that’s a that’s a big, you know, probably a big question. Right. So for the people that may not be as familiar with Epic and Cerner, and as you mentioned, massive EHR systems. Right. And obviously you mentioned that Cerner changed hands. But these these systems are. health systems specifically designed for hospitals and making sure that they can put all the different parts and departments that go into a hospital. They can take that data and combine it all into one. So you could get able to do charting. They will do storage of information, health information in there. And they’ll make sure that all of it is customized, maybe the wrong word, but uh to each different department but the data stays clean uh and that it can be used throughout the organization as one whole so uh do you want to elaborate on that a little bit yeah sure um you know so that and you’re correct that is uh totally correct when it comes down to that um

Speaker 1 | 33:16.558

you know uh like i said emr ehr system is basically a uh system you know you go check in it’s you know everything you know all documentation is done within the hr emr system and the nurses the nurse the physicians they all use this in order and that’s where all your data is kept right so um and with that said for me working for cerner um i was a learning facilitator um also um i did i i dove in on the other side there and it comes down to um helping with the builds of the um uh for each you know um i mean each client that i had at that period of time so for myself it’s a for instance so when so when you um when the hospital purchases that emr when they decide to switch to cerner um that’s when you know the team that i was part of um is uh is uh that’s when we come come in so that’s when we did come in at that period of time so what happens is is that you know they speak with the physicians they speak with the the the the you know uh east department every other guy and they talk to you talk to them and we customize you customize that um you customize that uh that system around their workflow right so you got to know what their workflow is how they do things how where they put their data how they put their data how are they doing in their old in their old emr system you had to do all those things before you even do that build and then from there um what what what happens is this is a long process this is probably your price you know sometimes but you but you can have multiple clients too you know but but but one specific uh you know, hospital would have to go through this for her entire year. And at that period of time, this is before remote had, you know, pre COVID. Right. So at that period of time, we were flying, you were, I’m flying to Canada, I’m flying to, I mean, I was in Idaho, Idaho falls. It was another area that I know, I mean, I’ve never, I’ve never been to Idaho. So that was pretty cool.

Speaker 0 | 35:35.938

It’s interesting you say flying because I, so I’ve, uh you know obviously if you’re in it and um chances are you’re gonna fly back and forth to somewhere right you know you’re right right and i was on a business flight and i sat next to um and you know every once while you sit down and you have a conversation with somebody that you’ll you never you’re never going to see this person again but you sit down and you’re sharing the flight for an hour or two and you’re like well we’re gonna have a conversation and i sat down next to um uh a woman that worked for epic and uh you know and so we sat and had a conversation for a good hour and a half about what she did at epic and uh you know all the challenges you ran into and all stuff like that it’s funny because it lines up with a lot of the things you’re saying you did at burner yeah you know and how you did that yeah yeah and and so i want to dive in this real quick because i think this is pretty interesting so um my um My mother actually was a director at a hospital and person director at a hospital. And she actually had dealt with a lot of the transformations and stuff like that over to the new EHR that they had. By the way, I know we use we’re using EMR and EHR electronic health records, electronic medical record system. Right. So for the PA. People that don’t know. I just want to make sure they know the acronyms, right? And they pick champions over there or super users, power users, whatever you want to call them, right? Yeah. And they find the people. And she was one of them. And had to work to integrate the, you know, here’s what we do. And here’s how I think it should work, right? And talk a little bit about that. Because that’s such an, you’re taking. you’re taking people and i i joke because um my mom will call me and i’ll tell you say something you know she was the other day she was trying to figure find her pictures and i said don’t worry they’re up you know we just got to put them in the cloud and she’s and she goes oh the cloud i i don’t i don’t like this cloud where i don’t i can’t see it i don’t know what’s going on right so um so not you know you Not extremely technical. I do believe she still has an AOL address. Love her to death, but she has an AOL address, you know. So she was on AOL until it just crashed into the ground. Right. So, you know, when we we look at this, she but she was helping. So you don’t necessarily have to be technical, but these are the folks that understand the process. And this is kind of what you’re talking about. Right.

Speaker 1 | 38:29.790

Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So we in and that’s what we did. We you know, we you know, the the Pacific Hospital would choose, you know, their super users. Right. So they’ll have a nurse. It’s like you’re saying your mom, you know, a nurse, a physician and all everyone sit there, you know, and, you know, everyone sit in this room and we’ll all sit down and talk about what their workflows are. Right. So I had this, you know, we have to sit there and speak to each. One of those different areas, departments, you know, we’re talking radiology, we’re talking urology, you know, each one of the departments have their own separate workflow. And you’re working with them to figure out what their workflow would be within that EMR system. Right. So and then we’ll work with them. And then from there, what they do is they choose who their super users will be. And from there, we come up with, you know. we would come up with a plan to uh you know to how we’re going to train them right so um you know in that period of time you know there it was set up so they had a training session they had a whole a month long i can’t remember exactly how long maybe it was a month or two but we had a team we had a team for each area one person would cover uh one one person would cover that day in particular department and train all those individuals in that in the apartment. We’re talking all the nurses, all the all the physicians, everyone. So everyone would get scheduled to take that train. Right. So what I said is. you know as a learning facilitator you would not you would have to know that system in and out you know so you have to sit there and study that system and know it from in and out what goes on the back you know background and also some of the things that the users may experience you know every new guidelines and that super user is there for for instance when that gold line does happen they don’t know not only would you know know that you know uh we would be available The, you know, that super use will be available, especially after we even left. So they will have to know it, the ins and outs of it also. So pretty, pretty intense. Right.

Speaker 0 | 40:52.102

So much of that. So now we take all that, we take all of that information that we’ve learned with the, the processes and the workflows and, and what’s happening. We put it all together. Right. And then we make, you know, a, you know, we. I’m using the word customized, but it’s not really customized, right? It’s because we’re not like recoding the app that is doing all this. You’re essentially just, you know, putting in the correct fields, putting in the right way for, like you said, the workflows to happen. So you’re using the features of the application itself, you know, that are in the system that it has. and you’re working within the confines of those. And I want to make that distinction because customization sometimes usually means you’re going out, grabbing something, putting it in to make it do something that’s not natively supposed to do. But this case, you’re using the native tool set in this application and changing it to fit the workflows and processes of this organization, right? I want to make that note because it’s different.

Speaker 1 | 42:03.549

That’s correct. Yeah, that’s correct.

Speaker 0 | 42:06.311

So. okay so um and and then shoot and you implement these things how many of these were you doing uh a year you think um probably you know sometimes you know between three to four five sometimes you know that’s a lot of projects together but i think it’s really like you know but you have projects you

Speaker 1 | 42:27.585

know you could have a client here in canada another client in in like i said i was in idaho you can have another client in So, you know, Florida, I mean, and you can have, you know, but you’re, you know, you are managing all those at all at the same time, you know, and working with them, you know, all of them have their specific goal lives that they’re trying to work towards and issues that they’re running into. And you’re studying and making sure that, you know, learning that system for that particular area, making sure that you know that, you know, it was just a pretty, you know, like I said, pretty intense. uh, job to do, you know, uh, but it was, you know, but also it was fun. I, I, I loved every, every, uh, every inch of it, you know, uh, it was everything that I dreamed it would be. Okay.

Speaker 0 | 43:19.638

What’s the, what’s kind of amazing here is, is, um, is you’ve spent, yeah, you know, almost your entire career, well, since Cerner, right. Um, in, uh, healthcare. uh right you haven’t you really haven’t deviated uh coming out of uh cerner because each uh each position and stuff that you’ve had is it’s had a um it’s been a health care uh related stuff um so it you know currently you’re um like i mentioned you’re at the clearwater cardiovascular consultants right and um director of information technology and there um you know how has your How has your experience over at Cerner helped you in this regard, with this job?

Speaker 1 | 44:12.154

It helped me because for me, you know, coming out of college, you know, learning every different department, right? So now, you know, I know I have experience in every department when it comes down to from revenue cycle all the way down to women’s health, you know? So, yeah. It helped me understand that. And I help me understand it from a from a medical view also. You know, I mean, not only am I thinking about technology, I’m thinking about the medical. You know, I mean, so I was just talking to someone the other day here about women’s health. And then, you know, people just don’t realize how much goes into having a baby. You know, I mean, and I, you know, I really there are so many steps to get to the. point of having that baby to after the baby is born but in the in the EHR EMR system you know that training is probably about a day and a half two hour a day and a half to two days of training you know I mean eight hours per you know eight hours both days just to get to the process of, you know, as I say, prenatal all the way down to postpartum. You know, I mean, so you got to bring the baby in, you’re documenting two charts, you got to make sure that, you know, and within the system, in my head, what I’m thinking is, okay, how can I make sure that these users know how to do this within the system without having any issues? What, you know, what, you know, help desk, what help desk issues I’m going to run into when it comes down to that? You know, everything. Like I said, everything along those guidelines, I mean, it’s just, that’s what’s helped me is because I understand each department now. You know, I mean, like I said, I’m all the way down from home health, you know, all the way up to, you know, revenue cycle, any department within the hospital or in the medical realm, I understand now. And it really helps me when I come, when I’m working on a system too. And when somebody speaking to me about what issues they’re having. So,

Speaker 0 | 46:19.500

you know, you make a great point in that, too, which is glad that you did when you talked about the multiple different departments. And not even that, like even that’s within a hospital, even coming out of the hospital, you have home health. You have. And when I did health care, it wasn’t even in a hospital. Right. It was we were doing different items up from there. So. So there is a and I’m glad you mentioned that, because even within that, you know, experience that I had, there were different departments in there and they were handling different patients. Right. And each one had a different need. They had different workflows. They had different processes. They had different security items that were needed. It’s a it’s like when you’re working for health care. And like when you work for businesses, too, I mean, because even in different businesses, you’re going to have different components. But it’s so important to know the business and the processes and how things work in that organization prior to implementing the solution. And I’m so glad you brought that up. That’s what a remarkable thing. I want to move to our. Our final segment, which is the IT crystal ball. There is so much. By the way, I would love to have you on again because there’s so much that we didn’t cover. I would love to have a healthcare cybersecurity talk with you. I’d like to have you on. Let’s talk about healthcare. Let’s start. I’m going to preference this a bit. Um, because I want to, I want to target this next, uh, segment and give you some time to talk about it. Um, we’ve talked about, um, and at length, uh, these EMR EHR systems, which by the way, at the time they were starting to get implemented when they got big was such a transformative way to, you know, um, uh, you know, digitalize basically medical records. That’s, you know, these were, uh, you know, beforehand it was, you know, people. literally paper and folders and they grab the giant folder and put it down and fumble through the paper i mean amount of time and the amount of things you can miss by not being able to see it electronically um is is huge and so it was a very transformative time uh to these now if you go to a hospital and they’re not using an emr like i don’t know you must be in a remote part of the country right so exactly I mean, it is at this point, it’s almost a necessity to have an EMR system and be using it. And whether or not it’s customized to where they need to go, I’m sure it’s a different story. But at least most people are on EMRs right now because it was kind of mandated, so to speak, to be on it. So we’ve done that. We’ve gotten there. Most people, most organizations, health care organizations are using either an EMR or a hospital. Or they’re using some type of electronic record keeping for their system. And they’ve tied it loosely to their billing system if it’s not one and the same. All right. So you’ve got these solutions now that have digitized health care. Great. We did it. We digitized health care. All right. And now we’re in the process of making sure not only we’ve digitized health care, that we go, OK. how do we enhance our cybersecurity around this and and and make sure that we um protect it right from all the threats that are going on because there’s a lot and um And so now and you hope you’ve done both at the same time. And so now we’re here. We’re at that spot. Where are we as a health organizations, right, going to be five years from now? Where do you see this? Where do you see this going?

Speaker 1 | 50:39.629

Wow. I’m glad you said that. So, you know, that’s a really great question. You know, you were saying how. how transferable you know it was from going from paper to the EHR system. I was just having this conversation with someone yesterday or last week someone was asking me and I think someone else had the same question for me and you know I’m probably gonna say this and you can be like yeah you know you’re hearing it all over the place but you’re gonna hear it again AI right so yeah of course of course AI is what is where we’re going

Speaker 0 | 51:17.400

uh definitely um but wait i’m gonna but i’m gonna i’m going to uh dive into that for a minute right because you’re gonna throw me ai then i’m gonna i’m gonna ask the follow-up question how will ai be used right and how will it transform calcare

Speaker 1 | 51:36.285

it will be used so before i um you know uh left you know uh cerner um and went on to where in my next my next part of my journey uh you know there was you know they were talking about ai and and you know and how it’s going to change you know healthcare so but what that said is you know right now you know to give you an example a position walks into the room right talks to the patient the patient you know, gets all the information on that patient and what’s going on with that patient, what their, what their chief complaint is, you know, what the HBI, you know, you know, their diagnosis, everything, those guidelines. And then when, what they do now is they leave that, your, your, your, that office, and then they go back to their office. And then what they do is they type everything up. They do a note on, on, on, on their patient. And then after that, they got to make sure everything is the other, you know, all the information, all the information is correct. Everything in those guidelines. And then they have to sign off on that note.

Speaker 0 | 52:48.763

All right.

Speaker 1 | 52:50.663

So here in the future, which is, I think I want to I want to make sure I think or or oracle Cerner Cerner just announced that they are bringing a solution to the. and they’re one of the first ones to bring the solution to the uh um to the forefront i think it uh sometime in the next year uh is what happens is that ai will track everything that that position says when that position walks into the uh uh to go speak to that patient um it’s tracking everything that that that position is saying to that patient there the ai is going through the actual note and documenting everything in the note and after that after that position leaves the patient goes back to his office he’s everything’s documented within the note and all he has to do is sign off on it and that is it and make sure yeah so yeah

Speaker 0 | 53:52.426

so so now okay now i’m gonna i’m gonna poke holes in this um what are the items that we need to be careful of right because i can think of one which is, you know, which is AI likes to, you know, it uses predictive patterns to basically generate, which is amazing, by the way, and how it can just go, I think you’re going to want this. One of the things I use it for all the time is I will type something out. And if I get busy and something like, you know, I have to handle something. while I’m working on something, instead of like losing the thought, I’ll be like, finish this thought and hit enter. And I will go work on the other thing. And then I’ll come back and it is like finished the thought that I, you know, and it’s pretty close. Like I have to go back and edit it, but it’s like finishes thoughts for you.

Speaker 1 | 54:45.590

Right. Yeah.

Speaker 0 | 54:46.931

So, but sometimes it’s wrong. Like it hallucinates and creates things that are not accurate. And I’ve had to correct it before and be like, no, that’s, that’s actually inaccurate. And. And, um, cause it’ll, it’s again, it’s predicting, it’s not, it’s, you know, like it’s not the end all be all it’s using collective human knowledge, which also is flawed. And, and it’s trying to, uh, um, use that based on that pattern. So if it’s bad, if it’s basic, we all know bad data in bad data out, right? So you take a bunch of human data, which may not be accurate and you, and you say, make patterns out of it. you should imagine that it’s going to make wrong patterns every once in a while.

Speaker 1 | 55:32.660

One thing I can think of, you know, right off the bat that I can see that may be something that I watch out for is coding, right? You know, medical coding. You want to make sure all the coding is correct. You know what I mean? So, for instance, there’s a code for every, you know, ICD. You have your ICD-10 codes, you know. You want to make sure that they’re documented because sometimes they’re, you know. It may be a one-off, right?

Speaker 0 | 55:56.623

So let’s first, when you bring up ICD-10, it’s a trigger word for me, right? Because I go back to the projects that had to happen to upgrade all the pricing. Ah! Yeah,

Speaker 1 | 56:14.073

yeah.

Speaker 0 | 56:15.894

Every time they changed the ICD to a different coding, I’m like.

Speaker 1 | 56:22.838

why exactly right but but yeah so that that is where i can see you know my you know i’m i’m curious you know because of course like you we haven’t seen it just yet but i’m curious i mean how is that you know because there’s got to be you know you got that’s the reason why it’s very important i think it’s still very important that like you were saying to look and make sure that everything is correct before you make any uh final sign-offs on anything too. For instance, for a position, you got to make sure that note is correct and the right coding is put in and everything. But I can see that being an issue. I wouldn’t say an issue, but something to look out for. I wouldn’t say an issue, but something to look out for and make sure those codes are correct because that definitely could… I’ve seen it, the wrong ICD-10 codes chosen and it was a huge…

Speaker 0 | 57:21.030

effect on the other side of the fence there on the revenue cycle side so so huge so so all right so it um ai absolutely we know that uh you know there’s and there’s probably some things that we haven’t even thought of yet that uh that that that’s going to be used for um there are some remarkable um applications for it and the the technology is promising um uh and and the amount of things it’s going to be able to do is pretty remarkable but uh let’s say uh that ai is not the thing the let’s say that yes ai is the thing of the future and we want to set our sights on something else right i’m going to challenge even more right so let’s let’s go past ai for a minute and let’s think of the different things that um you know have happened in the field or let’s just think of the challenges right now that we have in the field i think this is uh this is important we have um uh challenges from ranging from uh um uh systems that are that may be uh um being used that are still while secure and and everything they these systems might be uh um outdated right uh and and they have limited support from uh other um from uh like coding perspective and stuff like that you know you’ve coders using different languages now that are not using happening a secure system a stable system one that fits perfectly into hippa right but um your coding base right uh the amount of coders you can get uh is is dwindling which is driving the cost of getting those coders uh um and those developers in uh to make sure that they uh um make sure they can operate the system so that’s one one problem right You have other problems where they may be interacting with the government and if they’re on Medicare or if they’re on the various different state Medicaid or anything that has to run through a government piece. What we know about the government is it likes to continue to use systems that are really, really, really slow, really archaic. um you know and uh and at some point i’m still using uh um dial-up modems to accept data right and right i mean and this is for those who don’t know i mean this is a you know no matter how advanced a uh healthcare company is they have to you know for the lack of a better term dumb it down to get it to okay right yeah all right definitely so so use that for a minute and see where do you think Where do you see that go? That’s tough, right?

Speaker 1 | 60:16.066

That’s a tough one. Yeah. Wow. You know, one of the things I can think of is, you know, you’re just talking about the cost of everything. I think one of the challenges is this is cost. You know, I mean, what is that going to look like in the next five years? You know, when it comes down to and where, you know, where that money going to come from? You know, I mean, how we want to be able to stabilize that or are we are we going to be able to stabilize that? You know, you know, it’s definitely a. you know you you brought a lot of good uh questions there and i and i really don’t know if i really have any answers to those you know i mean those are definitely some things that i could see that that can be challenging in the future and also too we know we didn’t touch on that uh on this but when it comes down to cyber security um i mean it’s more and more you know we have to be diligent when it comes down to uh you know our cyber security making sure that um um our information is safe um you know there’s different uh I just say that every day I’m hearing about something different that you know that our uh these uh uh cyber criminals are doing now to try to get data you know uh you know and uh you know so I think that’s that’s always going to continue to be a challenge and it I think it’s going to also be uh to get um to be more advanced as we go especially now too is that you know as we progress uh of course you know as we progress into you know we’re just saying my ai and all these other different cool things you know the uh the other side is progressing also so yeah that’s a valid point and you know what you’re seeing you’re seeing this uh

Speaker 0 | 62:04.453

you know if for lack of a term uh battle happen uh between ais right you’ve got you know the The AI being used for good versus the AI being used for evil, right? And battling each other to see who will win, right? You’ve stepped out of the military, right? But you’re right back into it in that regard.

Speaker 1 | 62:32.473

It’s kind of funny, you know? Not only funny, but coincidentally, you said battle, because I was just at a conference not too long ago. One of the speakers there was saying that, you know, he was a former veteran and he also in IT. And he said, no longer, you know, we are, what does he call it? He said, we had World War I, World War II, and now we have World War C cybersecurity.

Speaker 0 | 62:57.082

Oh, nice. I said,

Speaker 1 | 63:00.005

wow, you know, that’s a pretty, you got to think about it. You know, how, you know, how advanced we’re going to come down to all our systems and our technology. The end. You know, it’s and he said it best, you know, World War C, you know, and wow, you know, where are we going with that? So, wow.

Speaker 0 | 63:19.732

And OK, so you brought up a good point. So in the future. Right. Well, even right now, we’re highly dependent on technology for health care. And in the future, we’re going to I think you would agree. And based on what you said, we’re going to be even more dependent. on healthcare, sorry, on technology for healthcare.

Speaker 1 | 63:43.435

Yeah.

Speaker 0 | 63:44.375

And we have security concerns, you know, with, with healthcare. And, you know, if World War C continues to get even worse, right? Yeah.

Speaker 1 | 63:56.138

Right.

Speaker 0 | 63:56.518

Then, you know, then we could see some potentially disastrous consequences from the standpoint of healthcare interruptions, healthcare. downtime uh that could lead to um some very serious implications when it comes to uh care yeah um that’s a great point uh and i you know and and the important part to this is when i when i do um this this segment um a lot of times it’s focused positive right and that’s fine um you know we all like to look at the fun and positive stuff and everything like that but I do think it’s important to look at the serious side and look at some negative consequences, because by looking at the possible negative consequences, that’s where we can focus and look to improve and look to, you know, pour our efforts into so that we can avoid it. Right.

Speaker 1 | 65:03.182

I agree. I agree. You know, and the thing is, too, you know. you never want to be too comfortable right so you always want to be on your p’s and q’s at all times so i mean and this is also talking about it being aware of it is that that’s that’s step number one you know i mean um because you get too comfortable is when things happen right so you just want to make sure that that discussion is always there and never get too comfortable if you’re too comfortable then you know that’s when i know um you know just talking to you about you know um you know these cyber criminals they when they like to attack they like to attack and and do things when you know, when you’re least suspected, right? So, you know, and, you know, but, you know, like I said, that’s a really great point. You know, I really, I really do think that’s one of the biggest areas and continue to have to be one of the areas that we have to focus in on in the healthcare realm and IT, IT in general, technology in general, as we move forward in these coming years.

Speaker 0 | 66:13.202

well if if we’re on if we’re in world war c right and beyond you’re on on on our side the uh this that’s trying to prevent uh um you know the good side that’s right the side that’s trying to prevent this disasters and stuff like stuff uh um the the team that is uh enhancing cyber security to defend against uh you know the forces of evil uh that are using it for other means uh then I know I feel pretty comfortable that we’re going to prevail.

Speaker 1 | 66:46.581

Yeah, me too. For sure.

Speaker 0 | 66:50.324

Nerds, this has been Michael Moore, and I’ve been hosting this podcast for Dissecting Popular IT Nerds with Dion Johnson, Director of Information Technology at Clearwater Cardiovascular Consultants. Dion, great to have you on the program. What a great conversation. And please, please come on again.

Speaker 1 | 67:07.818

All right. Definitely. All right.

Speaker 0 | 67:10.000

Have a good one.

Speaker 1 | 67:10.941

You too.