Cleveland Clinic London is the private, not-for-profit healthcare organization’s newest fully digital international hospital branch, scheduled to open in 2022.
Gareth Sherlock, former CIO of Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi and London, detailed their journey in his keynote, doubling down on his experience setting up IT systems and services from scratch.Building a Digital Hospital – The Story of the Cleveland Clinic in London. ”
First, Cleveland Clinic landed in London with the aim of complementing rather than disrupting the city’s established healthcare market.
“For Cleveland Clinic, this is a great place to learn, innovate and grow,” said Sherlock. Mr. Sherlock currently runs his own digital health consulting company, Turimetta Consulting.
This market is where organizations not only attract talent but also find opportunities to further grow their brands.
Localize global designs
When building its IT system, the organization realized that it could not deploy the same system and replicate the same workflows from its main campus in Ohio, as was the case with the Abu Dhabi branch.
What they’ve done, Sherlock said, is develop a model and design for care delivery and support on a global scale.
For London, we considered which services in North America could be centralized and which services could be localized.
This became the basis for the company’s global IT design, which was then strategically localized to London. Mr Sherlock said this meant the changes were only introduced to meet UK government regulatory requirements and comply with UK healthcare delivery standards.
“Other than that, it was the same, and we tried not to specialize or localize it to physician preferences or clinician preferences.”
Like other clinics at Cleveland Clinic, London uses its own instance of Epic EHR. The 184-bed hospital is also cloud-enabled.
In addition, approximately 6,000 applications for the Cleveland Clinic had to be streamlined and consolidated to 80 for London hospitals.
From 2016 to 2022, Cleveland Clinic London worked with selected vendors and integrators on around 150 projects involving an EMR and two data centres.
Long-term stabilization and optimization
Once operational, the London hospital experienced a prolonged stabilization and optimization period lasting 12 to 18 months instead of the usual 3 to 6 months.
“London was different. Everything was new. We had brand new policies and procedures. We spent three years developing them all – thousands of them. we had a new system, it could be pretty close to cleveland [Main Campus] But they weren’t the same. There was a difference with localization. It also delivered some new workflows and innovations to the organization,” Sherlock explained.
“Not only that, but everyone was new. We hired everyone from scratch, so no one had worked with us before. We needed to make sure we were ready to deliver.”
key to success
The construction of the London hospital coincided with a number of geopolitical and logistical disruptions, including Brexit, the blockage of the Suez Canal, and the coronavirus pandemic. We also had to keep our store open during construction. Despite the challenges, they proceeded to open a fully digital hospital from scratch.
For the team, having the right people was what made this effort a success.
“Healthcare is generally a risk-averse industry, and people tend to dislike big changes. But with this project, it’s all about change. Everything is transformation. So you need people who can handle that. A lot. “There’s a lot of uncertainty and a lot of complexity,” Sherlock said.
Other success factors include a strong culture of stakeholder and committed partner engagement, strong governance and financial management.
“We didn’t go over our original IT budget; we stayed within it. Despite all the challenges and complexities, we actually stayed within that budget,” says Sherlock. he said proudly.
At Cleveland Clinic, we made sure to stay true to our mission in IT in every way.
“It’s not about having a good system and having good support,” Sherlock argued.
“It’s not just that. IT needs to become a strategic partner. It has the same mission as the clinical team: Deliver a great patient experience and provide systems and workflows that enable caregivers to provide great care. That’s the thing.”
