RANK: #2 (MEDIUM HOSPITALS)
When Craig Willard describes his IT department, he not only calls it "forward-thinking," but "fun." That balance, he says, helps his small team thrive in a hectic and constantly evolving workplace.

Upping the stress recently has been Frankfort Regional Medical Center's complicated upgrade of its electronic medical record system, a project that consumed much of the staff's time.

"We have the freedom to laugh and make jokes at each other," Willard says. "That always helps us stay more grounded throughout the day."

For those in Frankfort's IT department, a typical practical joke (which perhaps only computer whizzes might find funny) is flipping a colleague's monitor screen upside down, leaving the person with the task of trying to reverse it, Willard says.

Andrea Gillund, the IT department's imaging systems coordinator and physician support coordinator, says she appreciates the amount of laughter that goes on at her job.

"Everybody's definitely a hard worker and very busy, but everyone's friendly," she says.

She calls her colleagues "humorous personalities."

In between the jokes and the guffawing, however, the team manages to get a huge amount of work done.
When the updated MEDITECH system went live Oct. 18 at the regional acute-care hospital, it was the culmination of more than two years of work by the IT staff, Chief Nursing Officer Sammie Mosier says.

"They've been instrumental in determining what kind of technology we need," she says, "and sometimes they can make things work that our corporate office doesn't know how to do. That impresses me. They really dig in. They work endlessly to get an answer."

Willard says his staff possesses a broad range of knowledge, but that along with their technical skills, they're also good thinkers. "We have very strong technical employees in the facility, but we can also be very creative, which makes us a lot better," he says.

Willard also encourages the staff to be team oriented. As an example, he points to the team's collaboration in designing a new hospital conference room.

"I've reached out to each staff member to ask, 'What are your thoughts? What can we add to make it really, really nice for the people using it?'" he says.

Although a number of the highly skilled IT employees at Frankfort are self-taught, Willard encourages his staff to keep learning. The hospital pays $6,000 a year toward class tuition fees, up to $24,000 in total, Willard says.

"I'm a firm believer in education," he says. "It's opened up doors for me as it will for my staff."

Three of his employees are now pursuing bachelor's degrees in business administration, computer science/information security and general education.

But Willard says he never hires based on an impressive resume; rather he looks for the right personality.
"When you're in a customer-focused environment, you can educate someone, but you can't teach someone to be a nice person, or (to be) someone who goes above and beyond," he says.

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