CynergisTek makes a point of hiring veterans, says McMillan. "Probably half our consulting staffers are veterans. Some of the best CISOs we work with in healthcare are former military folks. They get it."

"I'll be honest with you: One of the challenges we have these days is you hire folks right out of college, they have no work experience, they have no job experience, and they have to learn a lot at the same time as they develop their work habits," he says.

"You get a young person out of the military, who's just spent four years in that environment and that training – in that environment you're not worried about whether they're going to get up in the morning and come to work ready to go. They really are a value-add," he added. 'At the same time they bring their service ethic and commitment to their counterparts."

Since the CynergisTek "really, actively started trying to hire veterans," he says, "the workplace – just the feel of it, the camaraderie and everything else has just sort of lifted since we added those folks to the mix."

At the risk of oversimplifying it, "they just have great skills," says McMillan. Veterans with an expertise in information security, haven't just made it through basic training, they've gone to specialized computer schools, too.

"They typically go through a year of training before they're sent to one of the Marine Corps' data centers," says McMillan. "They work in large data centers, in small tactical units. They just have a tremendous amount of experience that the average IT person doesn't get."

When he was director of security at Defense Threat Reduction Agency – the DoD department focused on stopping weapons of mass destruction – McMillan estimates he spent about $10,000 a year on training for his computer security staff.

"They went to conferences, they went to training courses – you see the resumes for these guys when they come out of the government and they've got a list of certifications a mile long; the reason they have that is the government trains them and gives them that information they never would have had otherwise," he says.

"The guy on the private side either has to pay for it himself, or his company does – and a lot of companies unfortunately don't do that."

Long story short, he says, it would behoove CIOs looking for staff that can hit the ground running to take a second look at returning veterans. "You can't beat 'em," says McMillan. "As far as coming in and being able to be serve as project managers, or run a division or whatever you need to do, they're the best you're going to find."

Mission-driven

Coincidentally, Jonathan Manis, chief information officer of Sacramento, Calif.-based Sutter Health was in the Marines at the same time as McMillan, a few years behind him in seniority.

He first enlisted in the Navy, in 1978, with an eye toward eventually becoming a physician. "A military scholarship for medical school was my most likely path to a career in medicine," says Manis.

After serving as a hospital corpsman in the ICU of Jacksonville Naval Regional Medical Center, where he took care of patients for two years, Manis was eventually selected to go to the U.S. Naval Academy.

During those two years, he gained parachuting and scuba diving skills and eventually was assigned to a Marine unit called ANGLICO – Air Naval Gunfire Liaison Company – where he participated in Operation Desert Storm and a number of missions in places such as Haiti and Panama.

Manis' entree into healthcare IT came after his enrollment in Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif.

"The program they selected me for was computer science and information systems management," he says. "I was a captain at the time, and was assigned to the Pentagon, where I ran the computer systems of the Bureau of Naval Medicine."

In 1994, Manis decided to transition to civilian healthcare, working in IT at Sterling Healthcare in Coral Gables, Fla., Advocate Healthcare in Oak Brook, Ill., and now Sutter Health, where he's been for more than seven years.

Comparing his time in the service to his time in health IT, "It's amazing, at least from my perspective, how similar they are," says Manis.

"A lot of people think of the military in terms of combat operations," he explains. "But really it's more about mission. We did far more on the side of humanitarian relief, and working to take care of people. We worked to accomplish certain missions very much like we do in healthcare."

Much of what he learned in the military has "been a real value to me in my career," says Manis. And much of it is intangible personal skills – "motivation and perseverance, self-discipline and self-confidence, courage and commitment – that are nonetheless essential for success in the challenging environment that is healthcare in the 21st century.

"One of the things I think are most valued in the veterans we bring on (at Sutter Health) is that they're used to very complex environments," he says. "There's a lot going on. There are multiple priorities."

Many people get "overwhelmed or distracted" when there are competing imperatives on the way toward a goal, says Manis. "The military teaches you to thrive in a very fluid environment. To focus on what's important. And to take care of those priorities most immediate – with an eye a little bit downfield to make sure you're prepared for those additional priorities as they come at you."

Moreover, "they teach you the value of an individual effort as well as being part of a team," he says. "Perhaps more than anything, they taught me about leadership and taking care of your people. That means not only the patients we serve, but all of the folks – the physicians, the clinicians, the people here in the information services department."