Kristine Terrio calls it being "Zenned." The vice president of rehabilitation services at Capital Region Health Care (CRHC) is referring to what the health-care organization’s IT department used to do: Push new technology such as Novell’s ZenWorks desktop management tool on users without a word about possible service interruptions. The IT department was known to not even pass on routine system updates. One of the worst "Zen" incidents occurred a couple of years back. The department’s beeper system went down, and IT, while working to fix it, never alerted Terrio’s group of the problem. As a result, 30 therapists weren’t beeped when their noon appointments arrived, and no one noticed the lull until nearly 20 minutes later.

"Thirty patients missed treatment, all had to be rescheduled, and everyone was upset because no one told us," recalls Terrio, who heads the hospital’s departments for physical, speech, occupational, pulmonary and cardiac rehabilitation services. "IT was waiting to know what the answer to the problem was, but we just needed to know there was a problem [in order to institute an alternative communications system]."

Incidents like this one were the wake-up call for Deane Morrison, CIO of CRHC, a Concord, N.H.-based integrated delivery network of health-care organizations that provides IT services to its members as well as other surrounding hospitals, visiting nurse associations and physician practices. Beginning more than two years ago, Morrison started a journey to change the culture of his 80-person Information Technology Services (ITS) group from a primarily technology-focused shop to one steeped in customer service. Although the ITS group had received high marks from users for keeping the health-care organization ahead of the curve technologically?by being early adopters of such technologies as an electronic medical record system?it was also perceived by CRHC’s top managers as being out of touch with the needs of its user community. There were ongoing complaints about ITS employees’ sometimes disobliging demeanor when assisting users and a general dissatisfaction with how the group communicated?or rather, failed to communicate?with users.

Culture Shift

Morrison, like so many cios in health care, was at a crossroads. He knew that a major change was in order, but orchestrating a cultural shift away from a technology-centric IT organization to a more responsive and customer-focused group was no small feat. More important, Morrison realized that any sustainable change was going to have to start with him. Simply talking to employees about the problem was not enough?he was going to have to dig in and modify his own behavior. "The first thing I was doing wrong was talking about it and expecting others to do what I was saying, but not doing by example," he recalls. Morrison then set out to do what many IT leaders fail to do: He embarked on a formal campaign to embrace and promote a customer-service orientation, leaning on outside training and new technologies such as internal paging systems along the way. ITS also met its goals in part by leveraging its substantial project management expertise. With this approach, ITS was able to tackle a potentially unwieldy problem?customer service?with the familiar tools and skills honed on technology projects. This plan yielded concrete results, which in turn fed the enthusiasm so crucial for sustaining the initiative’s momentum.