Prime's system 'empowers' IT staff
Prime Healthcare Services' roster of small and medium community hospitals is growing fast – and spreading far and wide.
"We're all over the U.S.," says Sreekant Gotti, Prime's vice president of information systems. "There are 15 in California, one in Nevada. We're in Texas, in Kansas, in Pennsylvania, in Rhode Island."
Necessarily, that type of far-flung organization requires a high level of trust and confidence in each facility's technology teams.
[Slideshow: Best Super Hospital IT Departments, 2014]
Right now, that's a total of 300 people, "but by the end of the year we might go a lot bigger," says Gotti. "When we acquire hospitals, we don't let IT staff go; we try to keep the staff they have.
"We are very technology focused," he adds. "We invest a lot in every hospital we acquire. Most of the time they have IT from the early 2000s. Pretty much every hospital we acquire we have to change the system."
That's a lot of work, but, Gotti says, Prime gives its staff plenty of latitude with regard to how it gets done.
"I try to stay in the background," he says. "They are in the front. They are in control. I trust fully, and I believe that empowers them to take accountability and ownership."
