Inside CHIME: CHIME Board Chair Cletis Earle Sees Opportunities for Growth

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1.4.18
By Candace Stuart, Director, Communications & Public Relations

Cletis Earle understands how small acts can pave the way for enormous changes. As the 2018 chair of CHIME’s Board, he plans to continue CHIME’s mission to provide the education, professional development and networking opportunities CIOs need to be the best at their jobs. An active member on CHIME’s Public Policy Steering Committee, he and his CIO colleagues will keep up CHIME’s work in Washington, D.C., advocating for those health IT-related policies that contribute to quality care and trying to fix those that don’t.

Cletis Earle, CIO, Kaleida Health

Cletis Earle, Chief Information Officer, Kaleida Health

And as the senior vice president and CIO of Kaleida Health in Buffalo, N.Y., he understands the value of having a community of members who can turn to each other for support and guidance in an ever-evolving healthcare environment. He plans to advance the charge for transformational leadership, building off the successes of more than two dozen board chairs before him. And like each of his predecessors, he will bring unique experiences and insights that can lay the foundation for growth now and in the future.

“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.”

Earle credits collaborations for an accomplished career that includes five years as vice president and CIO at St. Luke’s Cornwall Hospital in Cornwall and Newburgh, N.Y., and numerous positions at Brooklyn Queens Health Care in Brooklyn, N.Y. “Much of the success in my career has been through collaborations – collaborations with different types of partners and now with competitors,” he said.

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.”

As CHIME’s first African-American chair, Earle hopes to extend CHIME’s workforce initiatives to diversify the pool of healthcare IT staff and leaders. In the spirit of the Women of CHIME program, he wants members to encourage young people from various racial, ethnic, cultural and socioeconomic groups to consider careers in healthcare IT. The goal is to have a workforce that reflects the diversity of the patient populations they serve.

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. “It gives them exposure to the idea that a hospital career is not just healthcare professionals but also technologists.”

He hopes that similar initiatives can be launched around the country and he welcomes the opportunity for CHIME members to participate. “We can start touching more lives,” Earle said. “How you measure that is difficult but it is better to do something than do nothing.”    

 

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