73 years old and still creating Vision and Change in the Healthcare Communities he serves

 

Jim Hauenstein, MBA BA, Interim Executive Director

 

Jim’s career spans over 49 + years in the Manufacturing and Healthcare Information Systems/Technology Industries.  Jim’s career started in Manufacturing Information Technology, where he spent 18 years in Manufacturing.  Jim was given an opportunity to change his career in 1983 to Healthcare information Technology and for the last 31 years, Healthcare Information Technology has been his focus.   Jim believes his success over the years has been due to his focus of the merge between the human aspect with the development of technology solutions for the organizations he has worked for.  In addition to building trusted relationships, Jim has always considers himself a visionary and over the last 31 years his focus has been creating a bridge between Care Providers throughout Healthcare.  He is focussed on marrying both the Financial and Clinical Applications with technology solutions that enhance the quality of patient care; designed around the Health Information Exchange.  The key to Jim’s success is building trusted relationship at all levels of the organization not just the C-suite.  Jim believes that today is the most exciting time to be in healthcare because real change is occurring and it is driven by enhancing the quality of care being delivered to the patient.  Quoting him: “Remember we all will be a patient someday and we will want quality care delivered to us and that means our latest patient record being shared with the care provider that is delivering the care.”

Jim’s latest undertaking was in 2012 – when Jim was asked by the Hospital Council of Northern and Central California to assemble the CIOs in the region to start a rural Health Information Organization (HIO).  Jim was elected chairperson of the SacValley MedShare Executive Work Group consisting of 20 stakeholders meeting every other week for 2 hours to create the plan for a sustainable rural HIE.  In October SacValley MedShare, with the assistance of the Hospital Council Foundation of Northern and Central Californian, he signed a contract with ICA to be their HIE vendor.  In January 2014 SacValley MedShare sent their Participation Agreement to the stakeholders; it was the first time that SacValley MedShare asked their stakeholders contribute money.  In February 2014 SacValley Med Share had their first Board of Directors meeting, demonstrated ICA Direct Secure Email to their stakeholders and it was approved.  SVMS went live with Direct Secure Email the following day.  In February 2014 Jim was selected interim Executive Director of SACVALLEY MEDSHARE HIO, which includes 5 counties in Northern California.

 

 

Transitioning From CIO To …

Many, including yours truly, have written about the importance of the role of CIO and the transition to other CXO roles. Some have gone on to become CEOs, entrepreneurs, financial advisors, angel investors and even VCs. When you look at DuWayne Peterson, you see that he was the Chairman at Pasadena Angel Investors and now the Vice President at Colorado Angel Investors. But you forget that for the past four decades he has been one of the most respected IT executives around. From 1977 to 1986 he was Executive Vice President at Security Pacific Bank, and the next five years he was at Merrill Lynch. I cannot even state all the places he has helped – I will need a book for it, but to the best of my knowledge, he was one of the first million dollar a year CIO in this country. I have known him and been his admirer for several years, and besides all the accolades he deserves for his expertise, he is simply a modest and wonderful human being. Thank you DuWayne for the all help and advice you have shared with me. I miss those morning breakfast meetings in San Marino.

Jim Sutter, formerly CIO at Rockwell International is another very respected CIO who made the transition to CXO roles, coaching peers, Board positions and advisor to a multitude of start-ups including my own firm UGovernIT, Inc. Jim’s current role is as a Management Consultant specializing in technology investments related to information systems. He also facilitates one of the most respected CIO Roundtables in Orange County. I have known him for a decade and a half, and learnt so much as both a CIO and entrepreneur.

 

Hindsight is 20-20

LinkedIn invited me (I am sure several of you as well) to write a letter of advice to youngsters who are just embarking on their careers. The theme was “If I were 22”. They asked me to address:

•    What do you know now that you wish you’d known then?
•    Are you where you thought you’d be?
•    What advice would you give to a young person entering the working world today?

As I embark on my new role as Consultant CIO in a mid-sized firm in the Bay Area, it was nice to look back decades into the past.

If I were 22 today, the first thing I would remember is that vision for the past can be perfect, but the future will always entail an element of uncertainty. At 22, I would have to take you back to 1977. I was a computer operations manager (a big sounding name) for $5 an hour job on campus at the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Southern California. I was studying my Masters in Computer Engineering where I was working on operating systems designed with pipeline processing in mind. I sent a message using Arpanet to a friend in India studying at IIT. I had to write a complex script to do it. I was intrigued by the fact that it was free. Even a phone call to my family was around $4 per minute. I proposed to develop the free message idea further to make it easy to send messages. My friends and colleagues laughed at me. They said I lacked focus and it was just a wild idea. I wish I had known that the Arpanet I was using for communicating between universities would eventually lead to the world-wide web. I wish I had persisted with my idea.

That was not the only mistake I made. Intel was interested in my work on pipeline processing. At that time Intel was a small company. I wish I had accepted it. Two mistakes are good enough for life, but that is not all. I had a golden chance to move into medical industry, but I chose to work in the aerospace sector. Not that it was a bad area, but it was very bureaucratic. I wish I had good mentors around me.

Lessons Learned

1. Nobody can predict the future, but please be around friends who can encourage you and experts who can mentor you.
2. Failure is the best way to learn – do not take failure personally.
3. Persist – the only real failure is giving up. Nearing 60 now, I recently got VC funding for an innovative software enabled management solution I have developed.
4. Most important, enjoy the journey. For the ultimate success in life is joy.