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Profile: Spencer Hamon's Comfort Zone
After leaving the big city for a job at a rural hospital, a CIO finds new challenges and aspirations and a place to hang his hat.
By Tom Kaneshige
Three years ago, CIO Spencer Hamons took a $30,000 pay cut when he moved from bustling Houston to the rural San Luis Valley in southern Colorado, a massive alpine valley where he and his wife vacationed regularly -- and he's lovin' it.
But his professional satisfaction doesn't hinge on sweeping views of nearby mountains; it's his relationship with the CEO and their mutual understanding of technology's strategic role at San Luis Valley Regional Medical Center that Hamons says will "absolutely" keep him there for at least another three to five years. (Hamons is among the 40% of respondents who say that they'd like to continue in their current role three to five years from now.)
Hamons covets the opportunity to make a difference by bringing big-city know-how to a countryside community. "I want to be the shining example of what you can do if you put the resources toward IT, put the right people in place," says Hamons. "I want to be an advocate for rural health."
Curiously, Hamons almost didn't take the job. The 79-bed, two-hospital medical center had just undergone an executive shakeup. A cost-conscious materials manager was running IT and had spent only $80,000 in two years. Network uptime was 65%, and data hadn't been backed up for more than a year. "We probably didn't know how vulnerable we were to system failure," says CEO Russ Johnson. Meanwhile, Hamons, then director of network facility operations at Houston's Methodist Hospital System, had helped build a state-of-the-art hospital equipped with redundant OC-3 network backbones and power coming from two grids.
Hamons spent three days interviewing with Johnson. "I had a very direct conversation," Hamons recalls. "I said, 'These are the issues I've found in three days, and I know I'm going to find a ton more. The only way I'm going to accept this job is if I have a commitment from you that you are going to give me the money to do the things I need to do. You also need to trust me that I'm not going to come to you and ask for $5 million but will probably ask for a million.'"
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