Cleveland Clinic London is the private, non-profit healthcare organization’s newest fully digital international hospital division, opening in 2022.
Gareth Sherlock, former CIO of Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi and London, described their journey – doubling down on their experience setting up IT systems and services from scratch – in the keynote session: “Building a digital hospital – Cleveland Clinic story in London.”
First, Cleveland Clinic landed in London with the intention of not disrupting the established healthcare market there, but complementing it.
“It’s a great place for Cleveland Clinic to learn, innovate and grow,” says Sherlock, who now runs his own digital health consultancy, Turimetta Consulting.
The market is also where the organization found an opportunity to further grow its brand and attract talent.
A global design localized
When building the IT system, the organization realized that it could not carry the same systems and replicate the same workflows from the main campus in Ohio – as is the case at the Abu Dhabi facility.
What they did, Sherlock said, was they developed a global care delivery and support model and design.
For London, they considered which services from North America they could centralize and which could be localized.
That became the basis of the global IT design, which was later strategically located in London. What this meant, according to Sherlock, is that changes were only introduced to meet UK government legal requirements and meet UK standards of care delivery.
“Other than that, we have stayed the same and have been careful not to specialize or localize due to physician or physician preference.”
Like the rest of Cleveland Clinic, London is also powered by its own copy of the Epic EHR. The 184-bed hospital is also cloud-compatible.
In addition, they had to rationalize and consolidate approximately 6,000 requests from Cleveland Clinics into 80 for the London hospital.
From 2016 to 2022, Cleveland Clinic London worked with carefully selected suppliers and integrators to deliver approximately 150 projects, including the EMR and two data centers.
Long stabilization, optimization
After going live, the London hospital went through a long period of stabilization and optimization, lasting twelve to eighteen months instead of the usual three to six months.
“London was different. Everything was new. We had brand new policies and procedures. We spent three years developing them – thousands of them. We had new systems, which may have been quite close to Cleveland (Main Campus), but they were not. the same: there were localizations and differences. We also had some new workflows and innovations that we also delivered to the organization,” Sherlock explains.
“Not only that, everyone was new. We had recruited everyone from scratch, so no one had ever worked together. We had to make sure the people were incredibly well trained and ready to serve our patients.”
Keys to success
The construction of the London hospital coincided with several geopolitical and logistical disruptions, including Brexit, the blockage of the Suez Canal and the COVID-19 pandemic. It also had to open a store while construction was still underway. Despite all odds, they went ahead to open a fully digital hospital from scratch.
What made the team successful in this venture was having the right people.
“Healthcare is generally a risk-averse industry and people don’t like a lot of change. But this project is all about change. It’s all about transformation. So you need people who can deal with that. People who can deal with a lot of variations a lot of uncertainty, a lot of complexity,” said Sherlock.
Other associated success factors included a strong culture, with engaged stakeholders and committed partners, robust governance and financial stewardship.
“We haven’t exceeded the IT budget we had from the start. We’ve stayed within it. We’ve even stayed under it, despite all the challenges and complexities,” Sherlock boasted.
With everything, Cleveland Clinic made sure they stayed true to their mission in IT.
“It’s not about delivering great systems and providing great support,” Sherlock insisted.
“It’s more than that: IT must be a strategic partner. It’s the same mission as the clinical teams: delivering an exceptional patient experience and delivering systems and workflows that enable our providers to deliver exceptional care.”