Best Hospital IT 2016: #1 Large Hospital
Phoenix Children's Hospital, Arizona
IT Staff: 107
Overall Score: 71.98%

The IT staff at Phoenix Children's Hospital is doing right by its kids. Through funds provided by a grant, the team worked together and created, entirely in-house, a program that has equipped every young patient with an iPad to help them get through their stay in the hospital – having fun while keeping track of the results of their healthcare.

"The iPads enable the kids to stay connected to family and friends with things like social media," said David Higginson, executive vice president, chief administrative officer and CIO at Phoenix Children's. "And we read from our registration feed so the iPad is presented with the right language and age-appropriate applications. This program allows the kids access to full-fledged iPads with installed applications as well as access to the patient portal to track their results."

Higginson said the program was achieved at a very low cost and requires next to no maintenance by IT staff. He added that Apple has been highlighting the program in its materials, and that the program has been so successful that the hospital is working on commercializing it for other hospitals.

"We tried to find a vendor, but in the end, we had a gang of five in IT who spent nights and weekends proving out how to make this work," he said. "This was a big effort inside IT. And it points to how we pull together – not just relying on me or a big spend of money – in a way that even was outside of their day-to-day jobs."

The role of IT has changed a lot at Phoenix Childrens in recent years. 

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"Traditionally, IT has been about the plumbing, and then it morphed into project management as we tried to implement great big systems," Higginson said. "In our organization, we in IT changed into business consultants in a way. It's important to manage projects and keep the infrastructure running, but business in the last five years has for us become trying to solve day-to-day problems. We often are asked to serve as consultants on how to solve business problems."

The equation has changed from department chiefs requesting that software be installed to department chiefs coming with challenges to be solved, such as how to optimize clinical workflows, Higginson explained.

"It comes down to: Can you be a consultant and help us make lean-based improvements?" he said. "We often are used as a lean process improvement entity using technology to get there. Technology has become the center for most people, whether clinical or non-clinical – technology is always at the core. That has really been the change. We've evolved from plumbers to lean process re-engineers across all aspects of the business.”

Workplace culture was one of 87 questions senior executives (CIO, CMIOs, etc.), directors of IT, clinical and systems analysts, technicians, help desk staff and others responded to on our survey.

Overall Ranking