February 6, 2013 Mark Hagland
blog
When Carolyn Clancy, M.D., announced on Jan. 31 that she was leaving the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), which she had headed for almost exactly 10 years (she became that agency’s director on Feb. 5, 2003, after previously working at the agency as director of its Center for Outcomes and Effectiveness Research), it signaled the end of an era.
December 18, 2012 Mark Hagland
article
More broadly, the shift towards a new population health-based focus, and towards authentic care management, is requiring not only bridges across the divide between care locations, but also intensive work to develop care delivery and management models healthcare system-wide. It goes without saying that this is difficult work; yet the leaders at many pioneering organizations are powering ahead, forging new paths without waiting for anyone to direct them to the new healthcare. And of course, they’re building new information systems and IT capabilities to support their innovations.
December 3, 2012 Pete Rivera
blog
The fun begins when you look at the various CIO personalities out there. They don’t always fit the corporate climate or mesh well with the CEO’s personality. Personalities and stress factors all contribute to decision making and if you take a step back, you often can get an education, as well as some entertainment value out of it.
June 14, 2012 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
article
Not only must organizations create sophisticated business intelligence tools to help identify high-risk patients, providers will have to engage patients and provide better care coordination to reduce readmissions, said IT industry leaders. “If we’re going to crack this whole issue of readmissions, plus so many other deficiencies, we need better processes, better outcomes, and a sustainable process, which is what cost [reduction] is really all about, then we’re going to have to solve these problems. It’s not just decreasing readmissions,” said James L. “Larry” Holly, M.D., CEO, Southeast Texas Medical Associates.
May 29, 2012 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
article
Not only is the relatively new role of the chief medical information officer (CMIO) becoming more widely accepted, healthcare reform drivers like quality reporting and accountable care organization development are adding new emphasis to the role, said CMIOs who participated in a panel that tackled the changing CMIO role at the Healthcare Informatics Executive Summit on May 7. “Today, with the idea of ACOs, quality metrics and reporting, meaningful use, and so many other dimensions, you really need to understand the medical process,” said Bill Bria, M.D., the vice president and CMIO at the Tampa, Fla.-based Shriners Hospitals for Children, and the co-founder and president of AMDIS (the Association of Medical Directors of Information Systems), the nation’s main CMIO association.
May 16, 2012 Mark Hagland
blog
Seattle Children’s Hospital’s Drex DeFord, in his closing keynote address to the HCI Executive Summit, last week shared with Summit attendees his philosophy of leadership. Refreshingly, DeFord, the current chairman of the CHIME board of directors, believes that CIOs need to get—and stay—outside their comfort zones.
May 15, 2012 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
article
The CIOs who participated in a panel that tackled strategies for creating data warehouses at the Healthcare Informatics Executive Summit on May 7 largely agreed that the main challenges in doing so centered around issues of governance and integration. “I think that governance for us is still the greatest problem,” said Patricia Skarulis, vice president, information systems and CIO, Memorial Sloan- Kettering Cancer Center. “I mean it in the sense that there are still some areas where [departments] withhold their data from putting it into the warehouse.”
May 10, 2012 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
blog
Health information exchanges are taking a wide variety of approaches around the country to develop value-added services to sustain their exchanges. Panelists of the "Health Information Exchange: Strategies and Sustainability panel" at the HCI Executive Summit discuss what has worked for their exchanges.
May 9, 2012 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
article
Drexel G. DeFord, board chairperson, CHIME, and senior VP and CIO at Seattle Children’s Hospital & Research Institute urged CIOs and other healthcare IT leaders to be ‘less Superman and more Clark Kent’ in their daily work, on May 8 at the HCI Executive Summit, held at the World Center Marriott in Orlando, Fl. DeFord said that being more like Clark Kent meant standardizing processes and eliminating wasteful practices so that IT leaders didn’t have to constantly swoop in like a superhero to fix IT problems.
May 7, 2012 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
article
In this podcast live from the HCI Executive Summit, Jeffrey Rose, M.D., vice president of clinical excellence, Informatics, Ascension Health, discusses how his 81-hospital integrated healthcare system, located in St. Louis, is moving forward with its CMS Pioneer ACO and other accountable care initiatives and what his organization has learned so far. This podcast was recorded after Dr. Rose's panel, "ACOs: Policy Strategic and IT Issues," a the Healthcare Informatics Executive Summit being held May 6 through the 8 at the World Center Marriott in Orlando. He was joined on this panel by colleagues Daniel Garrett, leader, Health Information Technology Practice, PriceWaterhouseCoopers; Sam VanNorman, director of business intelligence at Park Nicollet Health System; and Jeff Petry, vice president strategic initiatives, Premier Health Alliance.
May 7, 2012 Jennifer Prestigiacomo
article
In this podcast, live from the HCI Executive Summit, Dr. Bobbie Byrne, vice president of IT of Edward Hospital discusses how her organization is approaching data warehousing and the integration of clinical systems necessary for this initative. This podcast was recorded after Dr. Byrne's panel, "Beyond the Data Warehouse: Strategizing the Use and Analysis of Clinical Data for Meaningful Use," a the Healthcare Informatics Executive Summit being held May 6 through the 8 at the World Center Marriott in Orlando. Bryne was joined on the panel by colleagues Rick Schooler, vice president and CIO at Orlando Health; Dr. George Reynolds, CMIO and CIO of Children’s Hospital and Medical Center; and Patricia Skarulis, vice president, Information Systems and CIO, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
May 6, 2012 Mark Hagland
blog
Halfway through David Muntz’s excellent opening keynote address at the Healthcare Informatics Executive Summit this afternoon (May 6), I was struck once again by the sense that his having joined the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) four months ago may have marked a significant turning point for the federal agency. Let’s call it the Muntz Effect.
