Speaker 0 | 00:02.180

Welcome to Telecom Radio 1. This is your host, Phil Howard, the most bearded man in telecom today. It’s a very special day. I’ve been trying to track this guy down for months now, and it’s because he’s really kind of a big deal. Michael Archuleta, welcome to the show.

Speaker 1 | 00:18.344

Hey, thank you very much. Definitely honored to be here.

Speaker 0 | 00:21.105

So I’m not going to go through your list of awards, maybe just a couple of them, sitting on the CIO 100, Healthcare IT 100, NetApp. A-Team, Most Wired Hospital in the United States, correct me if I’m wrong with any of these, and CIOs to know. And I’m not saying this to put you up on a pedestal so that you can brag about yourself. There’s a reason why you’ve received these. And it’s about helping other people. And in the healthcare world, we obviously have lives in our hands. And IT and health has come together so much that what we do… with, with wires and technology and IT now actually affects people’s lives. So you actually have a really, really good story of the hospital that you came into before it was the most wired hospital. It may have been the least wired hospital or the most, most wires in a ball hospital. So I’m gonna let you start off with that. Why don’t you just tell me your story of how you got there, how you got to where you’re at?

Speaker 1 | 01:20.658

Yeah, absolutely. So again, thank you very much for having me. Always an honor. You’re doing some amazing things. So thank you. So when I came into the facility several years ago, took over technology lead, I really had second thoughts about what I was really getting myself into. Reason why is I did an overall assessment back in the day, back at the facility. They had a 59% uptime, servers and housekeeping closets, switches and housekeeping closets. They were using legacy hardware and software. And what was really scary was they were using a legacy firewall that the company actually went bankrupt. And there was no… So the overall focus on cybersecurity was not in place. And then walking around the facilities, we saw that there was home-grade wireless access points throughout the org. I mean, access points that you go out at Walmart, purchase them, and you have different SSIDs in different areas of the organization. Cape solutions were still a big thing. No disaster recovery, no data center, no standardization, no centralization, no redundant power management, no network redundancy. And then, of course, there’s absolutely no cable management at all. You know, if you looked at some of the before and after pictures of what we’ve been able to do, it’s pretty impressive because, I mean, I used to call them like the spaghetti rooms. We would go in, you’d walk into these specific rooms and you’d have a dump of Cat5 cable just thrown out, hanging from wall ceilings. I mean, there was no identification on what connection was going where. It was… It was really an interesting time and one of the critical elements was, okay, well, we have to implement an electronic medical record system. And I said, okay. So the organization was very behind the curve when the Affordable Care Act came out. It basically mandated a lot of these facilities to implement an electronic medical record system where then they would basically start running Meaningful Use stages one through three MIPS. Thank you. I mean, there’s a whole list of specific objectives. But one of the first objectives was meaningful use was stage one. Of course, the overall objective here was really trying to see if we could utilize the system in a meaningful way. But doing an evaluation in the system, as I stated, you know, you had a 59% uptime, which was extremely horrible. We had no staff in place. We had no data center. We didn’t have the technology basically needed to even implement or upgrade to what we needed to do to start doing electronic medical record documentation. So, I mean, brought in a consulting group to do an overall evaluation of the organization. We kind of looked at the current EMR vendors. We looked at all the specific applications that we needed in order for us to be successful with meaningful use with state one. We looked at the overall data center to kind of determine the efficiency of the network on how beneficial it’s going to be. This did as a full all technology assessment of the org. We had a specific deadline that we had to basically be ready, up and going, starting our 90 days. Because if not, the organization was going to be penalized because we were such late adopters. to getting an EMR implementers into the org. So the group came back, did an overall presentation, and they stated, well, you guys actually have a 20% chance of successfully going live. I would start at least hiring four. receiving some penalties until you can actually get everything implemented. So March 31st, April 1, we started on 90 days. We basically implemented all of the specific applications needed, all the modules for the electronic medical record system. We had a data center that was basically up and active, built, designed. We had the system in place. The team was basically built. So… We honestly made the impossible possible. And I can literally say those were days, nights to make this a specific reality. And I always say at the end of the day, too, is there’s two different types of people. There’s the talking community and there’s the GSD community. The talking community are those individuals that always say, well, you know, with innovation, with… Cloud strategies with data centers, you know, they talk, but they’ve actually have never lived what you and I have done personally. That’s why I love the GSD community. And people ask me, well, what’s a GSD community? The GSD community is the getting done community. And that’s the bottom line. And individuals like that, those are the people that basically reside in my circle. Let me stop you.

Speaker 0 | 06:33.665

I got to stop you right there for just one second. And I’m, and because we can, I know where this can go and we can talk about this for a long time. And the only reason why I’m stopping there for a second is because my theme for the year is taking the IT nerd or the person that knows IT or the IT director and taking them to the next level, taking them to the CIO level. Because that’s where a lot of people want. They don’t want just a job. They want a career. What’s your piece of advice? Because when all of this was thrown at you, I’m assuming you didn’t have all of the experience. I’m assuming you gained a ton of experience through going through this. But is there a piece of advice there or something that you could give to other people that may be in a similar situation that may just run for the hills? They may just say, no way, I’m running away. I can’t do this. Or they may fail in that situation and they may flounder in that situation. Or they’re just dealing with it right now. What’s your piece of advice to those people when they’re taking on?

Speaker 1 | 07:31.449

something like this absolutely you know it’s really about being a good example toward your team doing things that you know you show your team that you are you are doing something that they would be willing to do as well too that’s a critical element and i think moving forward too like i said you know you really have the talkers and the stunners as well too if you can feel that And you could basically build that overall structure because at the end of the day, this is what I always say too, is I say, I’m not a technologist. Yes, I am a technologist because I come from a technology background. I’m a business leader. We basically live in the digital age of healthcare. And healthcare is a digital organization that happens to deliver healthcare services, changing the culture and making them understand. What you actually do is such a critical element because the overall assumption of what IT is, is these individuals living in the basement fixing computers and printers is long gone. We are strategists. We are 100%. We are innovators. We’re thinkers. And you figure, we now live in the digital age of healthcare. If organizations aren’t basically leveraging digitalization technology, their center point of their overall strategy they will not be successful period jump above that

Speaker 0 | 09:03.709

I heard in another podcast that you did you talked a lot about gaining board support now I I come from a family I come from a healthcare family every one of my family is a doctor or a nurse or an anesthesiologist okay for like three generations back you talk and I know so I know what the board I know what the board looks like and acts like, at least from a good old boy’s standpoint, and then people that would be willing to innovate, and then people that are still behind. You talked a lot about gaining board support. This is what people want to hear right now. So I want, how did you go about selling this project? Because you went from balls of wires and old wireless routers tacked to a ceiling. How did you go about getting that support? Because I know there’s a lot of IT guys out there that just say, no way, you know, don’t even bring this to them. It’s going to be way too expensive. You’re going to get kicked in the teeth. You know, how did you go about doing?

Speaker 1 | 10:02.340

Absolutely. You know, at the end of the day, this is what I always basically say there too is we all have a new CEO in the organization. And everyone asks me, well, who’s my CEO? Your CEO is the patient. If we don’t continue to develop asynchronous tools that benefit the patient inside and outside of our organization, we will not be successful. And trying to get board support is such a critical element. Explaining to them, speaking their language is such a portion of success, which I think is extremely critical. Reason why is having them understand that, why we’re basically implementing these new technology initiatives, making them understand the reasons for the Affordable Care Act, the electronic medical record system, the objectives that we have to be faced with as an organization. Look at the overall demographics of… the community, the people we serve, the benefits that this can basically have for us. And if we continue to focus on the people, our patients, and they can see that, and we show good return of investments back with the implementations and the technology investments that we basically have had, moving forward, you’re going to get as much support as possible. And you’ll continue to gain support, which is extremely critical for you to be successful.

Speaker 0 | 11:31.745

What was maybe the biggest objection you ever got? Can you take me into one of those meetings, like visually? Do you remember it? What was it like sitting there? What was maybe one of the biggest objections you got? What was it?

Speaker 1 | 11:42.092

Absolutely. So what I like doing is when I looked at the overall technology assessment back in the day, I had to show a before and after scenario because I wanted to show the group, this is what was done with… the overall investments to the organization, the benefits, the understanding. You know, so showing those before pictures was such an eye-opening thing. I mean, when you see all this cable hanging, you have no structure, you have a 59% uptime, you’re losing this amount of money with being down this certain amount of time. And then really showing the penalties that were going to be associated to this organization if we did not jump on board. and move forward with what we need. Because I always say this at the end of the day, technology is not getting easier and healthcare is not getting easier. It’s getting more complex and it’s getting harder. And the thing is, is either we basically stay behind or we move forward. And then when I brought in the after pictures and showed them, this is where we’re at now. 99% uptime, 99% server virtualization, 90% desktop virtualization. And we now have… a NetApp All Flash Fast solution. We have a new generation firewall. We basically have enterprise wireless systems with two SSIDs, one that’s basically integrated into Active Directory for employees and one for our guests. We have redundant power management, full automated backup systems on-site and off-site so your information is finally being saved, full table management, standardization, centralization, and then redundant networks. So looking at that 99% uptime, building the first on-site data center really opened their eyes and said, wow, this is such a night and day scenario. And we see the benefits this has brought to our employees and to our patients. And this is the bottom line, though, Phil, is we are here for one thing and one thing only. I don’t care if you’re a technologist. I don’t care what realm of the healthcare organization you are. We’re here for the patients. We have to focus on those patients. We need to gain loyalty from those patients. We need to utilize technology as a tool to improve efficiencies, improve the overall continuity of care to the patients, because patient care is number one, period.

Speaker 0 | 14:24.660

I do a lot of jiu-jitsu and they say, you know, it’s like when you get your black belt, it’s okay, now I can start, right? Because now it’s like the first day of the rest of your career, you know, because that’s what you’re going to have forever. And that’s really, I guess my point is, it was like once you got all of the infrastructure upgraded and you weren’t experiencing 59% downtime and you had the backups and you migrated everything, it’s like, okay, now we can start. And I noticed that the amount of data you can now collect and potentially analyze. It’s like now we can start we can actually do something now I noticed you’re you know a big data guy and you used a lot with data and the one thing that I thought was really Cool, and maybe you thought like this is common sense It’s not a big deal, but is the digital check-in piece and being able to actually measure Complaint versus real data. What what are some of the biggest data pieces that you took away or that you and you guys are now able? To measure yeah,

Speaker 1 | 15:27.869

so at the end of the day. This is what I always say to is data saved lives That’s the bottom line. I mean, having proper, having good structured data is such a critical element. You know, we can look at improvements of reducing readmission rates. We basically look at improvements of reducing sepsis within the organization. There’s so many different elements that we are now utilizing data for, for improvements of patient care, improvements of operational efficiencies. improvements of employee efficiencies, they figure data, that’s a critical element because data is the new oil. And the way we leverage data is really going to be a critical element on how we continue to move and how we continue to be innovative.

Speaker 0 | 16:16.311

Awesome. I really appreciate your time today. If you had one final message that you had to deliver, whether it be to the healthcare community or to other IT directors, what would that be?

Speaker 1 | 16:28.234

This is what I always say, man. Just like when I started off, there’s… There’s two different types of people. There’s talkers, there’s the talking community, and there’s the DSD community. You need to be part of the getting shit done community, and that’s the bottom line. I don’t like individuals talking, saying that they’ve implemented these specific strategies, but they’ve never set a foot or lived an actual impression of what we have done. You know, it’s all about collaboration, it’s all about teamwork, and it’s all about getting out of our silos and trying to work together as a group of individuals. to try to transform healthcare IT. I see so many healthcare organizations living in silos that they don’t want to share information. But then we talk so big of interoperability. We talk so big about how we improve the experience of continuity of care from one patient to another location, getting information. Sometimes it’s not there. And the bottom line is we need that collaboration. We need to be part of people. They’re getting it done.

Speaker 0 | 17:31.456

Collaborate and do work. When I first started out, my colleagues and I used to run around yelling, do work at work in between the cubes. We used to yell, scream and actually do work. I love it. The more you start taking action, the more you start taking action and actually doing things, you realize and come to terms with things that you would have never realized if you hadn’t even just started doing the work to begin with.

Speaker 1 | 17:52.251

Absolutely.

Speaker 0 | 17:53.371

So it’s like a lot of entrepreneurs even say that too, until you actually get out there on the field of. play until you actually start doing something you you you just can’t what are you going to achieve you can’t even you don’t even realize what it’s like to be out there and that’s a that’s something one of my personal coaches Todd Herman says a lot he’s like you know you got to get out in the field of play it doesn’t mean anything until you test it on the field of play until

Speaker 1 | 18:15.767

you actually live and have experienced that then you would understand and like I said though man is we have so many talkers at times you know Just, I mean, it’s so loud. It’s so loud, but they’ve never experienced what we have done. And like I always say, though, too, is people that I surround myself with are people that are getting shit done. And that’s the bottom line.

Speaker 0 | 18:43.550

Really appreciate having you on the show today. I know you’re a busy man. So thank you for the small amount of time that you did give me today. And hopefully you’ll be back on the show again in the future.

Speaker 1 | 18:54.678

Hey, man, thank you very much. Always honored and keep being amazing.