Jason Bray ’05
Chief Information Officer
McAlester Regional Health Center
“I believe, in the history of Trinity University’s HCAD Program, I am the only alumnus to become a CIO.” How Jason Bray ’05 arrived at that distinction and his passion for that role is quite a story.
Jason’s initial interest in the health care industry was admittedly superficial. While an undergraduate majoring in finance, he visited a friend’s mother in the hospital and thought “(just gonna be honest) how neat it would be to wear p.j.s (scrubs) to work everyday.” It wasn’t until the patient died two years later and the hospital CEO “took me under her wing” that Jason’s passion for health care blossomed.
Having earned a MBA and working at INTEGRIS Health in Oklahoma City, Jason was speaking at a United Way event in nearby Edmond about his dream of becoming a hospital CEO. It was during this speech when Trinity HCAD alumni Stan Hupfeld ’72, FACHE and Bruce Lawrence ’82, FACHE (CEO and COO of INTEGRIS Health, respectively, at the time) told him after his speech that, in order to achieve that goal, he needed a master’s and Trinity was the best place to get it. While in the HCAD Program at Trinity, he found his CEO – Stan - a tough reviewer of his work. “He wanted to redline every paper I turned in. It was a bloodbath of red ink but it helped me tremendously in becoming a better writer.”
Over the next several years, Stan and Bruce continued to mentor Jason and he “can’t thank them enough.” Bruce subsequently hired Jason as IT CFO for INTEGRIS where he was given the opportunity to grow his passion for IT. In 2004, Jason left to consult with IBM where he “gained about 30 years of experience in three.”
It was the tragic and technologically preventable loss of his closest and oldest friend’s wife that cemented Jason’s passion to use IT to improve health care. Unaware of a previously diagnosed anomalistic aorta, doctors nicked hers during a routine tracheotomy causing her death. ”This story inspires me daily when it comes to the importance of health care technology and its capabilities to save lives” he notes somberly.
As CIO of McAlester Regional Health Center in McAlester, Oklahoma, Jason says “the reason I love the CIO role so much is because I get to be the connector point for department’s problems and how technology can help.” Plus, rapidly advancing technology, which allows for new applications in areas that previously could not be helped, “definitely keeps you on your toes.”
Jason is also keeping an eye on artificial intelligence (AI). “Watson with IBM is such a phenomenal invention” he exclaims. “A doctor reads about half a dozen medical research papers in a month; Watson can read half a million in about 15 seconds.” Today’s telemedicine, he predicts, will in years to come be a form of AI, perhaps leading to Watson on a cart or at each bedside. “That’s a little out there” he admits “but we have robots doing surgery today so why not?”
In 2002, while serving as CIO at the Oklahoma State University Medical Center, Jason received the Leader of the Year Award. Because Jason was nominated by the nursing staff, it holds special meaning since “rarely does the clinical staff appreciate the technology group.” However, the “amazing clinical staffs I have worked with at INTEGRIS, OSU, Methodist and now McAlester have truly made my job extremely rewarding.”
Jason is married to his high school sweetheart and they are parents to four boys, one of whom is autistic. He spends a lot of his free time with his family, enjoys golf and serves on the State of Oklahoma Board of Technology and the Oklahoma State University Okmulgee and Autism of Oklahoma Boards. In August, he was asked to testify before the Oklahoma House of Representatives about the state of health care in rural America and Oklahoma fulfilling “a lifelong dream to speak at the Capitol.”
Dedicated and deeply committed to impacting all facets of health care positively through technology, Jason has been resisting offers to jump into operations. “My passion for IT is really where I think I will remain for the foreseeable future.”
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