Kaleida Health CIO Cletis Earle Takes Helm as 2018 CHIME Chair
ANN ARBOR, MI, Jan. 16, 2018 – Cletis Earle, the 2018 chair of the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) Board of Trustees and senior vice president and CIO at Kaleida Health in Buffalo, N.Y., envisions a time when the healthcare IT community works as one to improve patient care, whether that means sharing strategies to strengthen cybersecurity or pooling resources to reach needy patients. He sees the IT community better reflecting the gender, racial, ethnic and socioeconomic profiles of the patient populations they serve.
“Collaboration and diversity are what I am most my passionate about as I enter the chairmanship position at CHIME,” he said. “Those are the two projects I would love to continue to emphasize and highlight.”
Cletis Earle, Chair, Board of Trustees, CHIME; Chief Information Officer, Kaleida Health
As board chair, Earle will help shape CHIME’s future direction and play a key role in the education, professional development and networking programs that provide CIO members with the knowledge and the skills to be transformational healthcare leaders. A CHIME member since 2006, he is active on CHIME’s Public Policy Steering Committee. In 2017, he represented CHIME at a U.S. House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health hearing about bipartisan legislation designed to improve the Medicare program.
“Cletis is a great champion for CHIME and our members,” said Russell Branzell, CHIME president and CEO. “Whether he’s talking to peers in Buffalo or policy makers in D.C., he presents a clear vision for how healthcare IT leaders can contribute to quality healthcare.”
Earle offers a program in Buffalo as an example of what can be achieved through collaboration. Recognizing their mutual challenges, healthcare IT executives in competing organizations in Buffalo put aside their rivalries to develop a regional anti-phishing campaign and other steps to strengthen cybersecurity. The collaborative culture they developed has prompted New York state health IT professionals to work together and with other groups on challenges like getting nutritious food to those in need. Those programs could complement efforts to provide preventive care to whole patient populations.
“If we are sharing and we’ve broken down some of those barriers through collaboration, it makes the next iteration easier,” Earle observed. “That is where population health is moving. It makes the communication chain that much more robust rather than limiting and therefore you have a better outcome.”
CHIME’s first African-American chair, Earle hopes to extend workforce initiatives to diversify the pool of healthcare IT staff and leaders. In Buffalo, he has been working with the mayor on programs that include visiting primary through high schools to talk with students about their career options. The program also brings children to health IT sites so they can get a first-hand look at facilities and the working environment.
“There is a lack of diversity in health IT, and it is not just female but also diversity of cultures and socioeconomic diversity,” he said. “We need to tackle this from all sides.”
Earle joined Kaleida Health in 2016 after five years as vice president and CIO at St. Luke’s Cornwall Hospital in Cornwall and Newburgh, N.Y. Prior to that position, he worked at Brooklyn Queens Health Care in Brooklyn, N.Y., in roles that included support manager, director of technology, vice president, CIO and privacy officer. He earned a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the College of New Rochelle in New York and a master’s degree in information systems from Strayer University in Washington, D.C.
His term as CHIME’s board chair began Jan. 1, 2018, and will run through the end of the year.
About CHIME
The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) is an executive organization dedicated to serving chief information officers (CIOs), chief medical information officers (CMIOs), chief nursing information officers (CNIOs) and other senior healthcare IT leaders. With more than 2,500 members in 51 countries and over 150 healthcare IT vendors and professional services firms, CHIME provides a highly interactive, trusted environment enabling senior professional and industry leaders to collaborate; exchange best practices; address professional development needs; and advocate the effective use of information management to improve the health and healthcare in the communities they serve. For more information, please visit chimecentral.org.
Contact
Candace Stuart
Director of Communications and Public Relations, CHIME
734.665.0000
[email protected]