CIOs see value in mission-driven vets

'How many adults do you know who have been responsible for more than $10 million worth of equipment?'
By Mike Miliard
04:26 AM

Qualified candidates

At Sutter Health, "we have a preferential hire for our military veterans," says Manis. "And that's not just here within IS because I lead it. I'm proud to say that Sutter Health actually has a strategic hiring focus for military veterans. We actively recruit them and do everything we can to ensure their success in the civilian world."

They bring a broad array of skills and experience to the table, he says. "We have everything from people who were in the health services within the military – EMTs, nursing assistants, nurses, physicians, ancillary services. We have representatives from every military branch. On the technical side, we have folks who both served and supported healthcare systems – radiology system managers, pharmacy techs, those sorts of things."

Sutter also hires veterans who had little to no medical or even technology training in the service – but who recognized a good opportunity to prepare themselves for the private sector when they got out – "folks who were mortar men and radar operators, who have gone on and received skills, and are interested in additional training, that have come on board and serve us now in our network administration and our desktop support."

For the thousands of men and women returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, hospital information services departments represent excellent job opportunities, says Manis.

"I absolutely do believe that healthcare is a good place for them to start looking," he says. "We typically run about a 10 percent vacancy rate here at Sutter Health IS – that equates to about 100 open positions a month. We often have difficulty finding qualified candidates."

Those veterans who are interested in taking the expertise they gained in the service and "learning additional skill sets in a new trade or technical ability are welcome to apply here, and we give them preferential treatment," says Manis. "Technology and healthcare are two thriving industries, and they make a terrific place for a young veteran to make an impact on their life and the lives of others.

Intangible skills

One former infantryman who made just that type of leap is Dustin Leek, vice president of enterprise technology services at Daytona Beach, Fla.-based Health First.

Interestingly, he says, in the Army, "I didn't do anything with computers at all, other than the GPS devices and cryptology devices from being an infantryman. My experience from the Army wasn't necessarily anything that would translate to IT or to healthcare."

But one day he met a supply sergeant who had a book of Java instruction. "I happened to like computers but didn't know much about them," says Leek. "He gave me one of those, and I wrote my first 'Hello World' program."

If there wasn't necessarily any practical IT experience to be had in the course of Leek's Army service, there was plenty to be learned about the ways of the world – how large organizations work, how effective hierarchies are structured, how healthcare is delivered here and abroad.

"From a leadership perspective, the Army taught me a lot," he says. "From a healthcare perspective, the Army taught me a lot about just dealing with the government, and big, slow burdensome processes."

The VA, for instance, "just having to deal with that from the customer's perspective during the five, almost six years I was there, certainly helped" give perspectives on the challenges of delivering care on a large scale. Also, "getting to experience a foreign country's healthcare – like when I lived in Germany – there were certain things our own Army's healthcare wouldn't do for us."

Leek jokes that "as an IT executive in healthcare, specifically within an IDN, one of the things my army experience taught me to do was to know when to duck and cover when there's different objects coming at you from different directions."

But he's serious when he says that the leadership skills he developed there have served him well in his role at the health system – giving him the tools to be "agile, able to adapt quickly to the changing pace of anything, from meaningful use to ICD-10 to hurry-up-and-wait."

That experience means, "I tend to give veterans' resumes a second look – sometimes a third look," says Leek. "There is this indescribable skill or experience that comes from being part of wartime service – or even non-wartime service – that you can't replicate anywhere else.

"I can't put my finger on it," he says. "But they're onboard 100 percent with the team, they know how to focus on a common goal, know how to focus on a common mission. And to be honest with you, a lot of the people entering the workforce now who have not had that experience, they don't know that. They're more focused on their individual goals."

That's why he wishes more returning service members would give this industry a thought when planning out their job searches. "I feel like veterans probably don't really think about healthcare, and healthcare IT, as an option," he says.

"The Army has a program called from 'Green to Gray.' I got out in 2000, and got a booklet, From Army Green to Corporate Gray, that basically says, 'Based on what you did in the Army, here's what you could do when you get out.'

"So from the very beginning, your ideas about what you're capable of are limited unless you have a good mentor," says Leek. "I was an infantryman. When I got out of the Army, all I could think about doing was joining the FBI, joining the U.S. Marshall's service, being a cop somewhere, or a security guard. Those were the four options this book told me I should be. I felt that's all that my experience (prepared me for)."

Many returning service members need to be reminded, "it doesn't matter that all you did was tote a gun around and threw hand grenades and blew stuff up," he says. "You learn to do a lot of things in the military that don't necessarily translate into a corporate job, or a specific role."

To wit: "How many adults do you know who have been responsible for more than $10 million worth of equipment? Not very many. When it comes to health IT, we're making million-dollar decisions daily."

As healthcare continues to push forward in this national technological overhaul, needing all hands on deck as it does, perhaps it can learn some lessons and get some help from a group of people with a unique set of skills.

"One of the big things in healthcare is the pending labor shortage," says Jonathan Manis. "People are concerned about the talent that we don't have.

"I think the focus really needs to turn now to those returning veterans," he added. "As military units start to downsize, there's a real opportunity there for us to fill our structures with some very qualified and capable young folks coming at us."

For more on this topic, listen to the HIMSS webinar, 'You've Got This! Making the Transition from Military to Civilian Healthcare,' on Monday, May 12 at 2 p.m. CT.

[See also: CISO's biggest fear: 'what I don't know']

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