The vast majority of IT teams are very capable and hardworking people. But the number of IT SVP, VP and Sr Directors who have little apparent background in either IT or healthcare is simply STAGGERING and sadly increasing! They are so good at managing up and feeding into the "disruptive & innovation" narratives.
Unfortunately this applies to both UHC and Optum Tech, especially in UHC IT. After delivering essentially nothing after few years, UHC CIO is rumored as a likely successor for the overall UHG CIO?! The other top contenders each amassed teams of thousands ready to build out the "visions" that are completely disconnected from the ground reality.
Every department has their own Data Science team crunching similar data sets each declaring Big Data and AI, yet overall Digital and Data strategies are non-existent. External consultants collects millions to basically say what they are paid to justify ...
Again, this is a complete leadership failure! But who gets let go when the savings target need to be hit? We all know the answer.
UHG is lucky that its position in the market place is so dominant that it can afford to waste so much money on numerous one-size-fit-all solutions with no outcome. Hopefully there will be some major top-down restructure before more the talent get disillusioned and join competitors.
Dave is well liked. But he is only as good a CEO as the people he surrounds himself with. He needs to take a serious look at the entire top brass in IT across the board and time to cut out some real fat.