Rich Temple has it pretty good. The vice president and CIO of Deborah Heart and Lung Center, in Browns Mills, N.J., has a close relationship with every member of the C-suite and says he is valued by the hospital’s board.
“I feel very blessed that I don’t have the issue of folks not understanding the value of technology,’’ Temple says. “I feel like a valued member of the team and am brought into a lot of strategic discussions.”
That wasn’t always the case, he adds. Deborah is a small hospital and Temple is the first CIO. Before he arrived over five years ago, “There was a director-level person running IT and there was a sense [the board] wanted someone who could think more strategically about using technology in a way to positively impact the business,” he says.
Deborah Heart and Lung Center
Rich Temple, vice president and CIO, Deborah Heart and Lung Center
And that is what Temple does. He typically presents to the roughly 14-member board about three times a year and says that “not many projects get too far out of the starting gate” without his input.