The viral pandemic has created myriad changes in all parts of life. Healthcare IT departments have not been immune. The pandemic brought about a shuffling of priorities and functions at many organizations. 

While some organizations decreased the size of their IT staff, others have added to their teams and reorganized the departmental reporting structure, often as part of initiating new major strategic efforts.

Stanford Health created a role for vice president and chief enterprise architect whose responsibility is enabling initiatives for the health system and medical school with a new contemporary architecture. Stanford has also added an executive director for program management, who is working to centralize and develop a new PMO to assist in executing strategic initiatives and establishing best practices in IT authority.

Scripps Health in San Diego is focusing on technical leadership with a new position that will oversee key verticals such as enterprise architecture, analytics, ambulatory and acute care, access and revenue cycle.

Yale New Haven Health and the Yale School of Medicine initiated a telehealth adoption team to support telehealth visits and also brought in a telehealth and communication director and a collaboration director to bring together email, web collaboration platform and mobility teams.

Other positions that have been added include:

• Director of support services, program director of digital health and program director of digital health at UChicago Medicine
• Digital innovation and consumer experience team within the health IT department at NorthShore University HealthSystem
• Positions in data analytics, cybersecurity and clinical systems/EHR analysis at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles
• Two senior security engineers and one risk analyst at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center.

Has your organization made changes in its IT department?