In late October, Nordic welcomed Chief Client Officer Mark Costanza to the team. After Mark joined the Nordic delegation at last week’s CHIME Fall Forum, we asked him to share a few key takeaways from the event.
What were a few of the most common pain points discussed at the Fall Forum? 
The most common pain point still seems to be the one healthcare organizations have always wrestled with, how to accommodate everyone’s needs in the time frames they want it with the limited resources they have. It’s about priorities and managing those priorities. Organizations are looking at what they’re budgeted to do and how they can get it done.
Nordic facilitated two focus groups. Were there any specific commonalities among leaders in the focus groups? What are they experiencing? How can we help?
I really believe Nordic is and can continue to be a strategic asset to clients. We can be the change agent, help them translate their strategic business initiatives into key projects, do the heavy-lifting, provide key resources, and supplement where needed to free up their resources to move to the next strategic initiative.
What was something surprising you heard from CIOs?
In our focus group about Community Connect and mergers and acquisitions, I found it interesting that CIOs are now thinking about business models they never thought about before. Healthcare organizations are forging new business opportunities through Community Connect projects as well as mergers and acquisitions. Hospitals are now vendors to affiliates, and they have to determine whether the services they’re providing are operating at a loss for a larger purpose, covering their costs, or making a margin. It’s not the same business they were in a few years ago.
Our Data & Analytics focus group was an opportunity to get a sense where the participants felt they were on the analytics maturity scale. We saw some diversity because multiple platforms were represented at the table. In general, I believe the structure and capability to turn data into knowledge and insight is not fully evolved within health systems. I didn’t hear many people talking about succeeding with BI (Business Intelligence) yet. Organizations are struggling with staffing and maintaining talent within the BI and reporting teams. There’s still more of a focus on technical data, which is the foundation, really the first step on the journey.
What was your biggest takeaway from the event?
In general, CHIME is still the main knowledge-sharing and networking event for CIOs. They truly value the collegial atmosphere where they feel they can connect with each other as well as key business leaders.
