How Scott Waters kept MultiCare’s IT team steady as interim CIO

Key takeaways

Scott Waters, who became interim CIO in September 2025 during Overlake Medical Center and Clinics’ affiliation with MultiCare, focused on stabilizing and improving what was already in place instead of leading a major shift. He toured every hospital over 90 days, set up regional support models that put locally based leaders in safety huddles and held monthly town halls where staff could raise hard questions. Waters now moves into the CTO role as Ellen Wiegand becomes CIO, with plans to address infrastructure challenges and use AI to improve the service desk.

For an interim CIO, the primary objective isn’t to transform the organization or lead a major directional shift, according to Scott Waters. “It’s to stabilize and improve upon what’s there,” particularly during a transitional period.

It’s precisely what he set out to do while guiding Overlake Medical Center and Clinics, where he had served as Chief Information and Technology Officer for nearly a decade, through the affiliation process. In 2024, Overlake formalized a long-term commitment to become part of MultiCare, an 18-hospital network providing care across the Pacific Northwest.

For Waters, who stepped into the interim role in September 2025, providing stabilization was a multifaceted effort focused on creating new support models, rethinking operations and establishing trust.

Regional teams, organizational support

As per the terms of the affiliation, Overlake has maintained a separate IT team. And so for leadership, it was imperative to find a way to blend the cultures, which Waters sought to accomplish by attending IT executive meetings and embarking on a 90-day tour of all the hospitals.

The “environmental scan,” as he termed it, involved holding listening sessions, sitting in physician lounges, doing drop-ins and pulling all the data together to create a go-forward plan.

One component? Implementing regional support models in which locally based hospital leaders attend safety huddles and conduct bidirectional communications about what’s happening within IT. The idea behind it is to provide “boots on the ground,” said Waters, adding that hospitals tend to have their own micro-cultures. “I felt it would be powerful to have someone from the community as the IT representative. So far, it’s been very helpful in pulling us all together.”

And because IT is considered a shared service under MultiCare’s “hybrid model,” regional hubs can leverage a larger pool of resources. “We try to take advantage of the scale of being a big health system, while ensuring decisions are being made close to where care is delivered,” he said.

Changes also happened on a macro level.

Like many health systems, MultiCare has transitioned the IT organization away from a siloed approach and embraced models that are “more dynamic and aligned with the business,” he said.

“If you’re a network engineer or a specific applications person, you could technically be on a matrixed team that supports a service line, rather than being in a vertical where you just work with other engineers,” he noted. “It helps us to enable certain capabilities while also breaking down silos.”

Promoting transparency

None of this, however, can be accomplished without first establishing trust among staff and fellow leaders. For that reason, Waters, who has decades of combined experience in healthcare and technology, embarked on an ambitious tour to get to know the organization.

“Going from 5,000 employees to 30,000 is a big jump. It’s the same set of challenges and opportunities, but on a different scale,” he said. “It comes down to leading your people and being connected to the mission.”

In addition to touring hospitals, he established monthly town hall meetings, during which individuals from Overlake and MultiCare were encouraged to provide feedback and raise questions.

And there were plenty, particularly since Waters was interim CIO at the time. In fact, one participant asked point-blank what would happen to the new operating model when the permanent CIO stepped in. Others expressed concern about the financial headwinds in healthcare, which he was happy to address.

“I tried to be deliberate about making moves that any CIO would agree with, even if they establish a different or more extensive vision,” he said, praising the willingness of staff to pose difficult questions. “It’s important to be as transparent as possible. If it’s something I can’t answer, I’ll say that, and I think people respect that.

“We’re all adults. We can handle it. We want the context. We want to know the rules and the environment we’re working in. It helps us do our work better,” Waters added.

Navigating change

It can also provide a sense of stability that can go a long way when teams are going through transition periods.

For any leader, especially an interim leader, taking the time to listen and help provide a sense of stability is critical, particularly during transition periods. It’s the same philosophy he believes MultiCare can expect as Ellen Wiegand, former Chief Information & Digital Officer at VCU Health, assumes the CIO position.

“She’s great. We’re excited to have her,” he said.

As Waters moves into the CTO role, his plans include addressing infrastructure challenges and leveraging AI technology to improve the service desk experience. Alongside David Knoepfler, MD, Chief Clinical Officer, he is working to develop guiding principles around the safe and effective use of AI and keep the organization focused on “practical and impactful” use cases.

“We need to stay focused on what problems we’re actually trying to solve.”

Kate Gamble is an award-winning healthcare journalist and editor with more than 20 years of experience covering healthcare IT. She has interviewed hundreds of healthcare leaders and has focused on numerous topics, including digital transformation, patient experience, rural healthcare, physician and nursing leadership and more. She can be reached at [email protected].