Cover Story
Medicine man
Butler Health System’s Ken DeFurio shares some of his cures for leadership ills
By Brian Horn
Smart Business Pittsburgh | March 2010
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Ken DeFurio has worked in many positions within Butler Health System, but just because he’s now president and CEO, doesn’t mean he has all of the answers for his 1,700 employees.
“That is a real trap you can fall into,” he says. “Things have changed.”
For instance, when DeFurio started in the organization, everything was done on paper. But now it’s all computerized, and he wouldn’t know where to begin to document patient care in the electronic world.
“My job isn’t necessarily to say, ‘Yeah, been there, done that.’ It’s to understand in changing the workflow that much, what additional burden or what obstacles have we created for the staff, whether it be doctors, nurses or anybody else,” he says.
It’s DeFurio’s job to keep an open mind and remember that just because something is done electronically doesn’t mean it’s better.
“If you slowed a nurse down or you’ve taken a nurse or a doctor away from the bedside because you are making them type into a computer now, you’ve got problems,” he says. “I hear that kind of feedback as you are going through those types of implementations and changes. My job is to make sure we are moving forward and not taking steps backward under the umbrella of progress, because it may not be progress.”
DeFurio needs to have an understanding of the issue and find people who can help.
“In this case, it might be one of the guys from the IT department who can write a program to streamline the documentation, as an example,” he says. “Then you get that resource applied. You work with the folks that were on the front lines and you improve the situation and make it better for them.”
Here are some of the other leadership lessons DeFurio has learned during his career.
