CHIME CIO Fall Forum

CHIME Fall Forum Interview Series: Rich Pollack, VP & CIO, VCU Health System

Conferences, EHR, Guest Post, HealthIT, , , , , , , , ,

Rich-Pollack-CIO

Rich Pollack, VP & CIO at VCU Health System

There’s a lot of healthcare history at Virginia Commonwealth University Health Systems, where Rich Pollack is VP and CIO, and not just because their medical school has been in existence since 1838. VCUHS was also the third site to deploy the TDS7000 System, meaning computer provider order entry (CPOE) has been in use for more than 30 years. While that predates Pollack, he has a compelling history of his own. He started out on the clinical side of healthcare as a radiology administrative manager. As the world of health IT started to shift and electronic health records became more prominent, Pollack found his clinical background desired by HIT Vendors, and what might look like a meticulously planned career journey was in fact serendipitous. Pollack’s experience continues to serve him well today as he continually looks for ways to enhance patient care through the merging of two worlds. As far as initiatives that are in queue for the year, we discuss everything from telemedicine to data archival, and all their Cerner solutions in between.

CHIME Fall CIO Forum provides valuable education programming, tailored specifically to meet the needs of CIOs and other healthcare IT executives. Justin Campbell, of Galen Healthcare Solutions, had the opportunity to attend this year’s forum and interview CIOs from all over the country. Here is the next interview in the series:

Key Insights

It’s a little unusual, you don’t typically find a lot of academic medical centers with a payer organization

We’re going to try and avoid point solutions and instead go for the EMR vendor’s population health solution, partly because of its tight integration into the EMR.

This organization was an early adopter of electronic medical records and CPOE. We were the third site to deploy the TDS7000 System, way back in the late 70s-early 80s.

What was fortuitous for me was that for a long time, health IT was mainly focused on business systems, financial, billing, and revenue. It was only in the late 80s-early 90s that the focus began to shift to clinical systems and the electronic medical record. That’s exactly around the time that I made the transition into health IT.

You need that understanding of what patient care processes are like: what is the world of the clinician and the caregiver?

Campbell: Let’s start out with a little bit of background about yourself and about VCU Health. I know you’ve been there for over a decade. Tell me about your role there and what you folks are working on.

Pollack: I’ve been here for about 11 ½ years. We’re an academic medical center leveraging Cerner EMR, about a $3B a year organization, and we’re fully integrated. In other words, we have a hospital component that has a community hospital and a children’s hospital, with over 900 beds. We also have a large outpatient component where we see about 650,000 patients a year in over 100 clinics, mostly specialty/sub specialty. We also own our 750-physician practice plan. Those physicians practice in all the clinics and hospitals. They’re complimented by 1,500 other providers, mid-levels, residents, and such.

We are a part of Virginia Commonwealth University, which is the largest university in Virginia. The medical school, Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine, has been in existence since 1838, so there is a rich history. Another component we added in about 15-16 years ago, is a payer. We have an insurance entity called Virginia Premier. It is a Medicaid HMO, and is the third largest in the state with about 200,000 or so members. That’s a little unusual, as you don’t typically find a lot of academic medical centers with a payer organization.

I run the IT organization, which oversees all the information technology for the entities I previously mentioned. We’re well integrated at the infrastructure layer: we run the same revenue cycle/billing system, from GE, across the inpatient/outpatient environment; and the same EMR, Cerner, services the entire organization. There is a certain amount of decentralization, as you would typically see within an academic medical center, but for the most part, we’re still tightly integrated.

Campbell: That sounds like a vast realm of responsibility for a healthcare information technology leader like yourself. How many applications are you responsible for in the enterprise and do you leverage any enterprise application management software to catalog and manage those?

Pollack: We have about 150-160 applications, depends how you categorize them, which is relatively modest for the size of the organization we are. That’s primarily because we have three core systems that are used by everyone: the EMR, revenue cycle, and ERP. Of those 150-160, some of them are very small applications. You have CBord Dietary Planning Software that runs on a server somewhere and it’s not awfully critical, all the way up to the revenue cycle GE/IDX systems that run on redundant AIX boxes, to the Lawson/Infor ERP, which is remote hosted, as well the Cerner EMR, which is also remote hosted. That’s the portfolio. We don’t necessarily have a formal application management system, but we have a database that we put together that tracks these applications. It looks at: who are the owners, who are the stewards, how old is the software, when’s the next release, when is it going to go out of support, where is it run, how many servers, what location, and those kinds of things. We put that together mainly from a disaster recovery stand-point because we want to know where these systems are, how are they going to be supported from a DR standpoint, what tier they are, and what’s the underlying architecture to support DR for that tier.

Campbell: Thank you for elaborating on that. It’s very insightful. In terms of population health management, how is that managed today? Do you have point solution? Do you rely on the EHR vendor? Do you have a data warehouse that you’re leveraging? Can you tell me a little bit about your approach?

Pollack: Though we don’t have a formal ACO, we are involved in managing population health. As an organization, we’ve been involved in population health management for a long time. We have a large indigent population with a lot of chronic disease patients. We recently stood up a multidisciplinary complex care clinic, that serves our top 5% most costly populations. We use our enterprise analytics data warehouse and our analytics team to help stratify and identify certain populations.

We are looking to deploy Cerner’s HealtheIntent Population Health Platform, primarily the care management aspects of that, both acute and community care management, and secondarily, the smart registries feature. We’re trying to avoid point solutions and instead leverage the EMR vendor’s population health solution, primarily due to its tight integration into the EMR. We are wanting to avoid pushing the physicians, who are the decision makers for these complex populations, out to yet another, or third, application, to try and manage these populations. We wanted to integrate it as tightly in the EMR as we can. That is the place our clinicians live.

Campbell: That makes a lot of sense. I think that’s why Epic and Cerner are in the positions they are today, namely the advantage of native, seamless integration and a singular database across care settings. This approach alleviates the need to harmonize nomenclatures across different care settings. Switching gears again, I know you have a background in medical biology, and you’re a HIMSS fellow as well. Tell me about how you apply your background into your everyday role. Coming from a clinical background, there may be components of it that are valuable to being a healthcare CIO.

Pollack: It’s interesting. In hindsight, it might look like some meticulously planned career journey, but in fact it was anything but. It was pure luck and happenstance that I started out on the clinical side, not on the business and IT side. My first career for 13 years was as a radiology administrative manager. I was involved in: nuclear medicine, ultrasound, radiology, the early days of CT Scanners, PACS, and such. I thought I would stay in that field forever. By chance, I was looking to make a move geographically and ended up going to work for a small health IT company down in North Carolina, that was looking for someone with a radiology background. One thing led to another, and I eventually gravitated into health IT. What was fortuitous was for a long time, health IT was mainly focused on business systems – financial, billing, and revenue. It was only in the late 80s-early 90s that the focus began to shift to clinical systems and the electronic medical record. That’s exactly the time that I made the transition into health IT. My clinical background and experience began to serve me well because of the focus on EMRs; I gravitated towards that. I worked for a couple HIT vendor companies, and then eventually became a CIO. I became attracted to the community hospital setting initially, but then went on to big academic medical centers: MD Anderson, Indiana University Health, and then eventually came to VCU Health.

My clinical background has served me extremely well because that is a bulk of what we do, or a significant part of what health IT is involved in. It’s also the most challenging part. You need that understanding of what patient care processes are like: what is the world of the clinician and the caregiver? I’ve been there, I’ve worked closely with them, I understand what’s involved and the nuances about it. I have a passion for it. All of those things have worked to serve me well. If the industry had gone in some other direction and supply chain was the most important thing, maybe I would be unemployed now… *laughing* At any rate, it just so happened that there was a confluence of forces at work – my background in clinical care with the industries change in direction towards EMRs – and it all came together.

Campbell: Very serendipitous. I imagine having that appreciation, more importantly that perspective, allows you to build trust with stakeholders in clinical positions. Thank you for sharing that background. Let’s discuss CHIME a bit. Tell me about the draw of CHIME for you and what you went there looking for this year. What were the key insights you gleaned from attending the event?

Pollack: The size of the event facilitates networking, which is such a key underpinning and important aspect of belonging to CHIME. I have made incredible contacts, incredible friends and professional relationships through CHIME over the years because it’s focused on networking, connecting peers, and mentoring and supporting each other in many ways. That’s probably the greatest value of the organization.

I find the educational offerings, particularly the track sessions, valuable and engaging. For the most part they’re not vendor presentations, they’re real world experiences from my peers across the country that I can derive some real essence from. That’s tremendously beneficial. I think some of the keynotes have been very inspiring over the years, so I get a lot out of that as well. Those are the key underpinnings: the educational aspects, the networking, and the professional development. I’m CHCHIO certified, which I had to study and take an exam for. I was a little reluctant to do so, but I did manage to pass! I tell people they must’ve had a big curve that year. But I got through that and achieved certification.

The other aspect, which has been particularly important the last several years with ACA and so on, is the voice CHIME brings to the political arena in terms of legislation and regulation. Whether it’s the ONC that they’re dealing with, Congress, the Federal Communication Commission, or the FDA, CHIME has developed a very strong advocacy voice for the world of healthcare IT. They represent our interests and needs extremely well and in a pragmatic way. They bring some of our experienced and senior members in close contact with the people who are setting up and crafting the legislation and regulations, so they can realize what will not work and why, or if there is a better way to go. I’m more of a recipient or beneficiary of that activity from CHIME, but I have a great respect and appreciation for it.

Campbell: In closing, what’s on tap for you this year? It sounds like you’re going to be focused on archival and I imagine integrating the community hospitals will be top of mind for you.

Pollack: We’re building a new hospital and rolling them into Cerner and GE/IDX, that’s our singular, largest project, but we have a lot of others. We have what we call an ERR roadmap, that we update every couple of years, with a lot of subprojects. We’re wrapping up Cerner Oncology implementation, we’ve got Cerner Women’s Health taking off, and we’re looking at adopting the Cerner Behavioral Health module. We’re conducting a lot of optimization, where we go back, revisit and optimize physician and nursing documentation. Those are some of the significant pieces. We also have a lot planned on our infrastructure side. This is one of those years where we’re investing quite a bit into building out our DR capability across our two data centers. We are trying to move forward with VDI at the desktop, which has been a challenge for us in the past, but new technology is making it more feasible for us. The organization continues to grow, the outpatient footprint gets bigger, and we’re opening clinics all over the state. We have telemedicine today but we’re going to go more into the world of virtual visits in a big way, so that’s an exciting venue for us as well.

Campbell: Well, I’ll tell you it sounds like you’re on the forefront of healthcare information technology. This has been most enlightening. Thank you for taking the time to chat.

About Rich Pollack
Rich Pollack is Vice President and Chief Information Officer for VCU Health System. There, his responsibilities include setting the vision for IT, supported by effective strategic and tactical plans that define the best practices in support of patient care and operational excellence.

At VCU Health Systems, his accomplishments include:
* Ongoing successful installation of electronic medical records and computerized physician order entry
* Selection and initiation of a new hospital billing system and enterprise resource planning system
* Contributing to the development of a new all-digital 15 story acute care tower utilizing layers of integrated technology, including wireless, VoIP phones, bedside device integration, mobile access to facilitate effective communication and high-quality care

He also has served as:
* Chief Information Officer for Clarian Health Partners, a $2 billion health system in Indianapolis
* An IT leader at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, lastly as CIO overseeing a 500-person information systems organization with projects totaling more than $100 million supporting clinical, academic, research and administrative functions
* Director of Information Systems for Nash Health Care Systems in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, where he and his team successfully implemented a computer-based patient record system for the 450-bed, multi-hospital organization, which received special commendation as best industry-practice

Rich has more than 30 years of health care management experience.

Rich holds a master’s degree in medical biology and is a member of several professional organizations.

About Justin Campbell
Justin is Vice President, Strategy, at Galen Healthcare Solutions. He is responsible for market intelligence, segmentation, business and market development and competitive strategy. Justin has been consulting in Health IT for over 10 years, guiding clients in the implementation, integration and optimization of clinical systems. He has been on the front lines of system replacement and data migration, is passionate about advancing interoperability in healthcare and harnessing analytical insights to realize improvements in patient care. Justin can be found on Twitter at @TJustinCampbell and LinkedIn.

CHIME Fall Forum Interview Series: Robert Napoli, SVP, CIO, Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest and the Hawaiian Islands

Conferences, EHR, Guest Post, HealthIT, , , , , , , , ,

Have you ever started a new job with a lengthy to-do list? Robert Napoli, Senior Vice President and CIO at Planned Parenthood Great Northwest and the Hawaiian Islands, can relate. When he first joined the organization three and a half years ago he began a rip and replace of their entire system, and in the end, the only thing that remained was the telecommunication system.  Once he was finished redesigning and replacing, he moved on to strategic initiatives including BI and analytics strategy, mobile health, patient engagement, and more. With experience on both the acute care and ambulatory side, Napoli offers up a unique perspective on the harmonization of clinical data. In this interview, he discusses his organization’s journey through data archival; why integrated solutions are the way to go; and the question on everyone’s mind: what’s happening with the potential defunding of Planned Parenthood? Napoli is a well-seasoned healthcare technologist who’s always aiming to innovate, and we discussed what he’s done and where he’s going.

CHIME Fall CIO Forum provides valuable education programming, tailored specifically to meet the needs of CIOs and other healthcare IT executives. Justin Campbell, of Galen Healthcare Solutions, had the opportunity to attend this year’s forum and interview CIOs from all over the country. Here is the next interview in the series:

Key Insights

In my experience, I have found that integrated solutions are typically easier to deploy and maintain, provide more predictable and lower TCO, and offer better support for overall organizational workflows.

So long as the data exists, we have a repository that is easily reference-able and accessible.

We ripped out the entire network, redesigned it, upgraded the equipment, installed wireless for the first time, replaced email and moved services to the Cloud.

Given the political landscape and the potential for defunding, we’re looking at ways coalesce those services, perform consolidation, and expand the expertise that some of the individual affiliates have to a broader, more national effort.

There’s hardly a CHIME event that I don’t come back with something that I can either implement or use in my organization.

We were recognized by CIO Magazine IDG for successfully launching the federation’s first mobile health app. This service virtually extends our medical expertise and allows patients either through a smartphone or computer, to have a real-time visit through a secure video consultation system.

Campbell: Thank you for taking the time to chat with me. Can you provide a little bit of background about yourself and about your organization?

Napoli: Sure. I’m the Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer of Planned Parenthood of the Great Northwest and the Hawaiian Islands. We’re the affiliate that is based in Seattle and operate health centers in Alaska, the Hawaiian Islands, Idaho and Western Washington. We have ambulatory clinics in each of those states, providing both primary and reproductive care for men and women. I’ve been in this position for a little over three and a half years now. Prior to that, I was the IT Director at a mid-size hospital in Connecticut and before that, held CIO accountability at a similarly sized hospital just north of New York City. In that role, I reported to the CFO and oversaw the strategic and tactical direction of the department as well as the operational management of our technology and information systems.  I was in that position for nearly nine years. So, I have both acute care as well as ambulatory experience.

Campbell: Certainly valuable to be able to understand both of those perspectives, especially given the challenges surrounding the harmonization and coalescence of that data from the ambulatory side to the acute side. Thank you for that background. In terms of applications within the portfolio, can you provide an overview of that? Specifically, the applications that fall under your umbrella in your organization? Could you also elaborate on your enterprise portfolio approach – best of breed, integrated, etc. –  and whether you have plans to consolidate in the future?

Napoli: In my experience, I have found that integrated solutions are typically easier to deploy and maintain, provide more predictable and lower TCO, and offer better support for overall organizational workflows. Certainly, this isn’t the case with all information systems and there have been occasions, throughout the years, when we’ve gone with best of breed solutions – cybersecurity tools being one such example. Also, a slightly different question, although related, is what to do when native functionality in systems isn’t as robust or feature-rich as third-party options. Population health and analytics are good examples of this. In these cases, we have no problem implementing third-party solutions to provide additional functionality and capabilities. But as a rule, I tend to push for integrated technologies when possible.

The application portfolio that my group manages is pretty standard and includes all of our clinical and business systems including the EHR and practice management systems. Shortly after arriving, I initiated a business intelligence and analytics strategy, so we support and manage these systems as well. There are a couple of outliers. For example, there’s a Cloud-based learning management system that we provide some support for, but that is managed primarily by our education and training departments. Outside of that, nearly every other piece of technology or software used by the organization is supported by my group. We’re comprised of the technical folks that support our infrastructure, computers, and telecommunication systems as well as the clinical and business analysts and data management teams. As the organization’s Chief Security Officer, I am also responsible for ensuring our organization’s HIPAA and cybersecurity posture, which our technical team supports with assistance from external consultants.

Campbell: Very good. Let’s touch a bit on data archival strategy. Do you leverage a data archival solution today? I know you mentioned the data warehouse, and I’ve talked with some folks where they’ve used the data warehouse for archival purposes.

Napoli: We do, although we haven’t been able to reach a consensus on a specific archival period. Fortunately, we have the capacity to archive all of our data without limitation, so landing on this hasn’t been a priority.

When I arrived at the organization in July of 2013, we didn’t have a report writer or database administrator, let alone a cohesive data management or analytics strategy. I made the decision very early on that once I had addressed our operational issues by stabilizing systems and redirecting staff, that we would need to focus on being a modern, data-driven organization. One of the first strategic initiatives that I proposed to my executive team and board was a comprehensive business intelligence strategy – it was an easy sell. In hindsight, this project was a heavy lift, and our biggest challenge was transforming an organization that wasn’t accustomed to working with a lot of data to one that now had a ton of data available. To realize full value from our investment and effort, we needed to get our business leaders to a point where they understood the data and owned the business results of using the system. Architecting the system was relatively easy compared to the cultural shifts that needed to take place. My goal from the outset was to provide a self-service data platform – I didn’t want our end users dependent on Information Services to understand our business and to get access to the data that is most meaningful to them. Although this work was extremely difficult at first, it has been a huge success.

Our biggest consideration when architecting the system was whether to build a data warehouse (which is better for archiving) or go with an OLTP approach, which is more suited for real-time business operations and better met my objective of empowering our business leaders. We decided on a hybrid approach that includes a data warehouse precisely for its archival capabilities. Our warehouse includes historical and current data feeds from both internal and external data sources for all our business units. So long as the data exists, we have a repository that is easily referenceable and accessible.

Campbell: One of the things I talked about with several of your peers was requests to access legacy data. The archival whitepaper we published addressed some of the concerns and challenges when there are eDiscovery requests for data. Specifically, when you archive that data, the shape of the data is inherently changed. Another consideration is what the chart that the clinician was presented with at the exact time of inquiry. That could differ from the PDF of the chart that is produced from most archival applications. There’s certainly a lot of metadata considerations. If you could elaborate on how your organization approaches that today and any insights you may have, that would be helpful.

Napoli: Fortunately, we haven’t had many eDiscovery requests in the time that I’ve been at the organization. We implemented our first EHR in 2010, so there isn’t a lot of data that I would describe as “legacy.” Other information systems were minimal prior to this. Our EHR vendor provides an archiving module which helps make our underlying storage environment more efficient, but our most requested data is in our repository where our users can access what they need although It’s not uncommon for us to receive requests for ad-hoc reports or custom dashboards. The requests for eDiscovery information typically occurs between the business unit making the request and our data management team, and I don’t necessarily have a lot of visibility into the actual discussions themselves. My team does a great job ascertaining that the data we’re pulling is correct and appropriate for the need.

Campbell: Shifting gears a bit, tell me a little about what keeps you busy these days. Any major organizational initiatives? Perhaps you could touch on some items you went to CHIME looking to find out more about.

Napoli: Right now, things at my affiliate are extremely stable. As I mentioned earlier, when I first got to the organization there were a ton of operational challenges that we needed to address. We spent the first couple of years ripping out and replacing every piece of core technology in the organization, except for the telecommunications system, which was replaced the year before I got there. We replaced every endpoint, server, and storage device including the infrastructure that housed our EHR and PM systems. We ripped out the entire network, redesigned it, upgraded the equipment, installed wireless for the first time, replaced email and moved services to the Cloud. In the middle of all this, we acquired the Hawaii affiliate and had to merge their systems with ours and bring them up on our EHR, so operationally we had a ton going on. We’ve spent the past couple of years focusing on the more strategic stuff – getting the data warehouse and business intelligence environments up and running, releasing a mobile app, implementing population health and patient engagement platforms, expanding our telehealth services, among other things. We’re at a point now where, not only operationally, but tactically and strategically, we’re in a great spot.

Lately, I’ve been focusing more of my time on assisting Planned Parenthood Federation of America with some newer and broader initiatives, such as cybersecurity and a shared services model. Let me quickly explain our relationship to the federation as this can be confusing. The national office provides our branding and accreditation, but they do not operate any health centers directly, which is the responsibility of one of 56 affiliates. Each affiliate is an independent organization with its own executive team, board of directors, budgets, information systems, and internal decision-making process. Given the political landscape and the potential for defunding, we’re looking at ways to coalesce those services, perform consolidation, and expand the expertise that some of the individual affiliates have to a broader, more national effort. It’s exciting because one of my earliest observations was that affiliates could benefit from centralizing systems and services, but there were internal politics and personal interests that prevented these conversations from moving forward. Although I do not welcome the thought that we could lose a significant part of our revenue, the situation is forcing us to be more agile and lean, and this is a good thing.

Campbell: I imagine sustainability and solvency is top of mind for you, providing value added services to create revenue generation in creative ways, and as you mentioned, finding economies of scale, and getting more operationally efficient because you need to. Tell me a bit about data sharing that may occur from a regional level to a national level.

Napoli: That’s one of the areas we’re evaluating. We decided to build our own data warehouse because there weren’t any viable options available through the national office or another affiliate. During the requirements gathering phase of this work, we heard anecdotally from many of our business leaders who expressed a desire to benchmark our measures against other affiliates or even those of other organizations. We’ve recently partnered with OCHIN, Inc. located in Portland, for our EHR template customizations and they offer an extremely robust real-time healthcare-specific data aggregation tool called Acuere that would provide this benchmarking. We’re impressed with Acura’s capabilities and are moving forward with a subscription. However, its ultimate usefulness and value are dependent on our end user adoption and whether other affiliates see the value in a data aggregation tool and participate in the program.

Campbell: Do you leverage any health information exchange technology? Or have you evaluated that? I know with some groups, it makes it easier if there are other affiliates that need to connect, to move to that hub and spoke model. An alternative is asynchronous requests where you web services are leveraged to broadcast out to other affiliates, ‘hey do you have any data that I care about,’ and that request is fulfilled.

Napoli: We don’t. We do share data with OneHealthPort, which is the Washington State HIE, so the interfaces and configuration necessary to exchange that data are in place. However, this is a state requirement if you see Medicaid patients and there isn’t much of a business case for participating without this mandate. There is, however, a huge business need to share patient data across the federation since most patients don’t realize that our affiliates (even those that are near one another) are independent, stand-alone organizations with separate EHRs, unique patient identifiers and completely closed data systems. Our patients are often surprised that their medical record is not universally accessible in all our health centers since we present a unified brand.

The aforementioned OCHIN has a potential solution to this that, although not an overnight fix, provides what I believe is the best opportunity for coalescing our disparate EHRs into a truly portable patient record. I’ll be working closely with them over the next few months as we explore this further.

Campbell: I wanted to get your thoughts on CHIME. I talked to Chuck Christian, VP at  Indiana HIE –  one of the founding members of CHIME – and he just raved about how refreshing it is to be amongst your peers. There is a lot of noise at the HIMSS conference whereas the CHIME forum is much more focused. At CHIME, you’re talking about the things that are meaningful to you and given the multitude of issues and responsibilities that come with being a healthcare CIO, it’s seemingly invaluable. I’ll give you another perspective you may have read in one of our earlier interviews, that was extremely cogent advice, from Dr. R Hal Baker at Wellspan. He mentioned the currency of a healthcare leader is measured in attention units. You want ambitiously desire to accomplish a great deal of initiatives, but your primary job as a CIO is to ensure extraordinary care to the patient population you serve. There’s so many ways where you can get distracted or lose your focus. Without me rambling on too much I’d like to hear your perspective on what CHIME means to you and the value you get out of it?

Napoli: I would agree that there’s a lot of noise out there, especially at the HIMSS Conference, just because of the size and scope of it. In many respects, I find it overwhelming even though I’m a proud member of HIMSS, hold CPHIMS certification, and serve on the HIMSS Innovation Committee. CHIME is an association that I value, and the annual conference is one that I look forward to for a couple of reasons. For starters, there are so many people over the years that I’ve connected with and met through CHIME. Chuck Christian, for example, was one of my faculty at the CHIME CIO Bootcamp that I attended several years back. Having the opportunity to reconnect with people who you invariably meet over the years is vital. Additionally, the content of the program is extremely relevant, and it’s engaging and useful. There’s hardly a CHIME event that I don’t come back with something that I can either implement or use in my organization. I sit on the CHCIO Exam Review Panel and recently agreed to serve as a CHIME Ambassador – these are testaments to the value I place on my membership.

Campbell: That’s great. Certainly, when you get so much out of an organization it’s great to hear that you pay it forward and give back to it as well. Any closing thoughts that you may have? The readership for healthIT & mHealth is primarily health entrepreneurs or digital health startups and in past interviews I’ve tried to inquire to the interviewees about advice they may have for folks in that space or what’s on the mind of your organization.  You mentioned patient engagement, and it’s a crowded space with a lot of apps offered in that area, but who’s moving the needle in a meaningful way? Any parting insights you’d like to leave our audience with?

Napoli: Mobile health is a personal interest of mine. After all these years, I still consider myself a technologist at heart. I helped develop one of the first medical transcription and dictation systems in the early 90’s and still like architecting systems and solutions as time allows. In 2015, we were recognized by CIO Magazine IDG for successfully launching the federation’s first mobile health app. This service virtually extends our medical expertise and allows patients either through a smartphone or computer, to have a real-time visit through a secure video consultation system. I also recently designed a mobile health app that I’m hoping to deploy nationally to all affiliates. It’s an app that patients can use to find our health centers, book appointments, connect and communicate with us. I’ve provided our national office with the design documentation, so that’s something to look for in the future.

It’s an extremely exciting time to be in Health IT. The more progressive organizations understood long ago the value that technologies such as big data, mobility, social media and the Cloud brought to the business. Increasing numbers of CIOs are now viewed as business drivers as opposed to the business enablers or operators of old. In my opinion, the real innovation is happening around technologies such as artificial intelligence, augmented reality, autonomous systems among others, which have the potential to greatly improve patient outcomes. The work around cancer genomics is especially encouraging. We’re not quite there yet, but I believe that we are on the cusp of some significant breakthroughs.

Campbell: I appreciate your perspective. It sounds like a lot of innovation is occurring and that’s something our readers will certainly be interested in.

CHIME Fall Forum Interview Series: Charles Christian, VP, Technology & Engagement, Indiana Health Information Exchange

Conferences, EHR, Guest Post, HealthIT, , , , , , ,

Charles-Christian-CIO

Charles Christian, FCHIME, LCHIME, FHIMSS, CHCIO Indiana Health Information Exchange

Innovation is high on the mind of Charles Christian, and rightly so. Christian is part of the largest health information exchange in the U.S. and is continually looking for ways to make connecting over 100 healthcare organizations simpler. His view? When all options are exhausted, the simplest solution is normally the best and most cost effective. It’s a unique perspective coming from someone who is doing the connecting rather than struggling for a connection. In this interview, Christian discusses the compelling work his organization is engaged in: From aiding the United Way in their quest to reduce infant mortality rates in particularly lower income areas, to analyzing data to target childhood obesity. Not only is Christian constantly looking for ways to improve healthcare’s information accessibility, but also healthcare’s leadership. Check out his 7 key takeaways from CHIME’s CIO Bootcamp.

CHIME Fall CIO Forum provides valuable education programming, tailored specifically to meet the needs of CIOs and other healthcare IT executives. Justin Campbell, of Galen Healthcare Solutions, had the opportunity to attend this year’s forum and interview CIOs from all over the country. Here is the next interview in the series:

Key Insights

One of the innovative capabilities we have is a smart search within our repository – likened to a google search.

In the end, we’re not willing to put the privacy and security of the data, for which we are custodians, at risk for the sake of giving someone access.

We have 3 pilots underway, where if a patient shows up in the ER at one of SHIEC’s members, information for that patient is queried to other member HIEs based upon zip code and in the case of a match, a clinical summary for that patient – often times CCD – is returned.

What we’re finding, is that the changing ambulatory landscape is making getting access to the data more challenging.

To me, the whole purpose of CHIME is to weave those networks of individuals regardless of size of organization, longevity in the business, and depth of expertise. It provides the education CIOs need to be highly successful.

Campbell: Let’s start with some background on you, your organization and your role.

Christian: I’m currently with the Indiana Health Information Exchange and have been here about 18 months. I spent 27 years as a healthcare CIO at a couple of different organizations and actually was a customer of the exchange when CIO at a southern Indiana healthcare organization.

We operate the largest health information exchange in the U.S., connecting over 100 hospitals, long-term care facilities, rehabilitation centers, community health clinics and other healthcare providers. All said, we have 140 total data sources, connecting to over 12,000 practices and serving over 22,000 physicians and 12MM patients.

We’ve only been incorporated since 2004. Years before that, the exchange was created out of clinical need in the Indianapolis area. It was actually created by the minds at the IU Health Methodist Research Institute, one of the big health systems in Indianapolis. There was a known need for the ability to share clinical information. We’ve been doing this for over 20 years, and the data in the HIE in some cases is over 30 years old. We currently have over 9B clinical data elements stored in the HIE.

Campbell: That is incredible and impressive. What types of exchange takes place today with the HIE?

Christian: One of our core services is results delivery. We provide the nation’s largest implementation of clinical results delivery and support the Indiana Network for Patient Care, a clinical data repository accessed via IHIE’s CareWeb application.

Results are delivered to participant EMRs in one of three ways – either to a secure inbox, through HL7 integration or through fax. A lot of physician workflows are built around receiving a fax. It’s examined, sorted, indexed and filed.

Campbell: You have quite a few endpoints, which is fantastic. Tell me a bit about the process for participant onboarding.

Christian: We’ve connected to over 250 EMRs. We recently established an HL7 connection to athenahealth. That enabled us to turn on HL7 delivery to over 2000 physicians at one time. Another health system we are working with is moving from fax to electronic delivery. My goal is to have electronic delivery and HL7 for every EMR. Part of the challenge is in resourcing – setting up the feed and building the integration with the EMR. It takes some specialized technical work to execute.

Campbell: Tell me a bit more about the payload of transactions that you receive.

Christian: We currently don’t receive CCD. Instead, we predominately get ADT transactions, results, transcribed documents, or HL7 embedded with PDF. We ingest it into the repository, normalize the data and send it along to subscribing entities. Through normalization, we organize the clinical elements to present to the end users via a portal. In this way, it makes it nice for physicians to use SSO from their EMR of record to the portal, and be able to see a lab result from Methodist hospital, let’s say, sitting alongside a lab result from St. Francis Health.

One of the innovative capabilities we have is a smart search within our repository – likened to a google search. Take one of our ER physicians at Eskenazi, for example. He’s got a search protocol called “chest pain,” which pulls any recent admissions with chest pain as the chief complaint. It also pulls troponin levels, any echocardiograms, or cast studies, and delivers to him instead of the physician having to hunt for them. We are actually working with an EMR vendor to embed this capability within the system of record. In this way, we can embed a search bar and the physician can access saved searches that retrieve information based upon criteria and filters they setup.

That is just one example of the extremely creative initiatives we are working on to minimize the workload for the physicians.

Campbell: With so many sources, I imagine there is a deluge of data you are swimming in. Can you elaborate a bit about the governance processes you employ today to dictate data access?

Christian: We have a seat on the management council for The Indiana Network for Patient Care. The exchange is also a curator of the data. It’s owned by its members and there is governance across that. A group of 20 voting members are elected by the members and use cases of HIE data access are presented to the voting group. The group determines the appropriateness of data access requests and whether they meet HIPAA guidelines. This approach is used for a variety of use cases. With approved requests, a window of access is provided. Participants can always see the data they provide, but the only way full access to the record is granted is if there is a treatment relationship with the patient. We’ve had some physicians present unique use cases where they are seeing a patient, for instance, a consult with an oncologist, and they don’t have a treatment relationship with that patient. Hence they cannot access the data. I get it. If it were my family member trying to consult, there would be frustration with the impediment. However, it’s one of those balancing acts to provide secure access to the data. Same goes for organ procurement, which has about a half a dozen use cases, but we still haven’t figured out how to create the appropriate access safely. In the end, we’re not willing to put the privacy and security of the data, for which we are custodians, at risk for the sake of giving someone access.

Campbell: Thank you for elaborating on the sound approach you are using for data governance, security and access. Do you have a unique compelling use case that comes to mind that you could share?

Christian: United Way has a program – fully funded by them – where they send nurses out into the community for areas that have high infant mortality rates, particularly in the lower income areas. The nurses provide help – whatever they may need. Perhaps get them to the pediatrician’s office, for instance. United Way approached us and said it would be marvelous if they could see the corresponding data – prenatal care, course of events, C-section, those types of things – that would be helpful as part of their outreach. The problem was that they are not a HIPAA covered entity. Our attorneys helped get them covered and we stood up the program. It’s great because of the difference made in those children’s lives, especially considering they are typically low income folks that don’t have the same access others are privileged to have. It’s truly an extraordinary effort to provide help to that population.

Campbell: It’s great to hear stories like this, where health information exchange truly makes a difference in the lives of patients who need it most. What other initiatives is IHIE working on or taking part in?

Christian: We are a member of the Strategic Health Information Exchange Collaborative (SHIEC), whose members are 50 of the sustainable HIEs in the country. Many of the members have different business models than we do. For instance, some are state entities, like Kentucky Health Information Exchange (KHIE), and others don’t persist data, they just transact, as with the Kansas Health Information Network (KHIN) model. Our first annual meeting was in 2015, where about a dozen of us got together to share ideas and have conversations about how we can work together, ways to share services, and how to lower operational costs.  Our country does not have an operational HIE that covers all of the market. SHIEC is the closest we have, and that covers about half of the population.

Take for instance, the Indianapolis area, where 500K people present downtown. They inevitably come to the ER. Unfortunately, the providers treat them based upon what is in the head of the patient or family members. We have 3 pilots underway, where if a patient shows up in the ER at one of SHIEC’s members, information for that patient is queried to other member HIEs. In the case of a match, a clinical summary for that patient – often times CCD – is returned. Once treatment for the patient is finished, it is bundled up with the clinical record and shipped back to the querying HIE. That is a model that can be replicated.

Campbell: That is truly an impactful initiative and I’m excited to hear where it will go – hopefully eventually providing connectivity for all of the population. Let’s shift gears a bit and discuss data persistence. With 9B clinical data elements, and metadata considerations, I imagine that creates a huge demand for storage. Do you purge any data today?

Christian: We persist data forever. We are acutely aware that it costs money to store the data, and costs money to back it up. We take our direction from our general council and we have terms and conditions built within the confines of state and federal laws for participants we receive data from. That said, we don’t have the primary record, rather we have pieces of it. In light of that, is it OK to purge or trim? It’s a good question, but it is not built into the software. We are socializing with members and asking the question “if you are going to delete data, what would it look like.” Our CMIO advisory group suggest that we don’t get rid of any of it. One of the use cases we came up with, is that if you are deceased for 5 years, and there is no new data after 5 years, then the data can be purged. All said, pursuit of purging data is a difficult boulder to push up the proverbial hill.

Campbell: It’s no secret that a lot of HIEs face solvency and sustainability issues. What does IHIE offer its members today as part of its value proposition?

Christian: Healthcare has long been very hospital centric. Hospitals were the ones who first moved to digital solutions and automated. Now we have a large number of physicians practices that are automated. We get data from them, parse that information and store it in our data repository. Consequently, the opportunity truly lies with the innovation occurring on the outpatient side. What we’re finding, is that the changing ambulatory landscape is making getting access to the data more challenging. You have urgent care offices popping up, telemedicine is gaining traction, and a lot of educational institutions use their own health clinic.

One of the initiatives we are working on is targeting childhood obesity. We are analyzing the data – such as height, weight, and age – to produce insights. Most of that data is located in the physician office record. Children have more access to physician care in a practice, particularly infants that are seeing the doc.

Campbell: Shifting gears again, let’s talk about CHIME. Tell me a bit about your experience attending this year. What did you get out of it? What were some of the things that drew you to the event?

Christian: I am actually one of the first charter members of CHIME. When I was with a small hospital in Southern Indiana, I received the call for an invitation, and thank God for it. A lot of my success in that small hospital was the result of having the privilege of standing on giants – John Glaser, Jim Turnbull, Bill Reed, Skip Hubbard. I got to know them and it was invaluable to call on them as a resource. Whenever I had a question and would send an email, they always answered it. The thing that differentiates CHIME from organizations like HIMSS, for instance, is that with HIMSS, I sit at a table with engineers, folks from telecom, people from different disciplines, whereas with CHIME, I sit down with all CIOs, and I know a lot of them very well. I only get to see my good friends once or twice a year, and it is vital to collaborate with them and gain their perspective and opinion.  It’s truly a privilege being on the faculty. In fact, it reminds me of a story. Buddy Hickman, a faculty member as well, and close personal friend of mine, is someone I know I can go to if I’m struggling with life or a work issue. We got together one Friday night as we were about to begin CHIME boot camp, and we got to talk about a personal issue. We huddled and shared each other’s stories. It’s really consultation group therapy. I left that critical conversation ready to rock and roll.

To me, the whole purpose of CHIME is to weave those networks of individuals regardless of size of organization, longevity in the business, and depth of expertise. It provides the education CIOs need to be highly successful. There is no fantasy that members take all the advice offered, however, if 1/10 of it sticks, they’ll be in great shape. As I mentioned previously, the beauty of it, is that I look at these people who work in prestigious organizations – some of the most noble men and women – and they are more than willing to give time they don’t have. CHIME has been accused of being a fraternity or sorority of sorts – an exclusive club – and my response is “And….?” To me, that is the draw and the beauty of CHIME. I remember being on the board for the first time in the early 2000s and I was in charge of membership where we were struggling to get to 900 members. We’re now up over 2000 members.

Campbell: You certainly have a wealth of experience and expertise surrounding pertinent healthcare information technology issues. Given the broadness of the field, is there a particular area of initiative you are working on to advance information technology in healthcare?

Christian: I’m working on a piece around predictions – many around interoperability. I have this feeling of the sirens calling me to a shipwreck. My view is that when all other options are exhausted, the simplest solution is the best and will cost the least. However, I have no delusions that I have a biased opinion, that’s to say, I have a view of the topic that is different. When you typically read about HIE – both the noun and the verb are used interchangeably, and that isn’t appropriate. A friend of mine, Dr. Josh Vest, Associate Professor of Health Policy & Management, IU, is conducting research on HIEs, classifying them: Are they private/enterprise? Are they a state entity or a community-based? He was originally shopping around the idea to fund it, but as happens all-to-frequently, there is not that much money when you are researching. He instead decided to take the research on pro-bono even though he has very well-funded research. I remain very interested in the results he finds.

About Chuck Christian
Charles Christian, serves as Vice President of Technology and Engagement Indiana Health Information Exchange, which provides the nation’s largest implementation of clinical results delivery in the country (DOCS4DOCS Service).  Christian has spent 40 years working in healthcare, including 26 years as CIO at Good Samaritan Hospital in Vincennes, Indiana, where he led the development and implementation of an EHR system and other IT initiatives. He also worked for Compucare and Baxter Travenol, in both management and implementation roles. Prior to his current appointment, Christian was vice president and CIO of St. Francis Hospital in Columbus, Ga.

Christian is a charter member and 2015 Board of Trustees Chair of the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME), and served as Chairman of the Board of Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) in 2008. In 2010, Christian was recognized by CHIME and HIMSS with the industry’s most prestigious honor: the John E. Gall Jr., CIO of the Year Award.  He was also honored by the Indiana Chapter of HIMSS with an award in his name: the Charles E. Christian Leadership Award. 

About Justin Campbell
Justin is Vice President, Strategy, at Galen Healthcare Solutions. He is responsible for market intelligence, segmentation, business and market development and competitive strategy. Justin has been consulting in Health IT for over 10 years, guiding clients in the implementation, integration and optimization of clinical systems. He has been on the front lines of system replacement and data migration, is passionate about advancing interoperability in healthcare and harnessing analytical insights to realize improvements in patient care. Justin can be found on Twitter at @TJustinCampbell and LinkedIn.

CHIME Fall Forum Interview Series: Daniel Morreale, Senior Vice President/CIO, Hunterdon Healthcare System

Conferences, EHR, Guest Post, HealthIT, , , , , , , , , , , , ,

daniel-morreale-cio

Daniel Morreale, Senior Vice President/CIO, Hunterdon Healthcare System

Consolidation is big on the mind of the CIO Daniel Morreale, of Hunterdon Healthcare System. After inheriting the multi-system environment two years ago, he has been evaluating a rip and replace initiative, moving to one core system. That’s not the only change Morreale hopes to make at the healthcare system. He’s inspired by the world of social media and the connections it can extend. In this interview, Morreale talks about the “membership model” for healthcare he’s looking to implement; the ups and downs of data archival and storage; and Hunterdon’s current data governance strategy. He also shares his personal predictions for the future of healthcare and bringing the focus away from the toys and back to the people.

Be sure to register for an upcoming healthsystemCIO.com All Stars Panel Daniel is participating in on January 19th: “How to Ensure Your Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery Plan is HIPAA Compliant.”

CHIME Fall CIO Forum provides valuable education programming, tailored specifically to meet the needs of CIOs and other healthcare IT executives. Justin Campbell, of Galen Healthcare Solutions, had the opportunity to attend this year’s forum and interview CIOs from all over the country. Here is the next interview in the series:

Key Insights

If you’re in my system longitudinally, can I get rid of those lab results you had 8 years ago? No, and I think that’s a problem.

Then again we have to ask ourselves, how long do we keep our EMRs and is anybody running an EMR they were running 20 years ago? Chances are no.

But then in the event of legal action, if I have it I have to produce it, it’s discoverable. I would rather only present for discovery that which I’m required to present for discovery. If the data had been purged by policy and no longer there then I’m no longer responsible for producing it.

Most health systems tend to grow by buying physician practices or expanding their market, which is a pretty traditional means of doing that work. However, I think an extraordinarily strong mobile presence and web presence can start to attract the 20 and 30 year olds who aren’t really using healthcare now, who I want if I’m in a shared risk environment.

At the end of the day I’m doing healthcare and that’s about people. How do I make the experience easy for you and me, or family, and deliver quality, convenience, and access?

Campbell: Let’s start with a little background. Tell me about your organization and your responsibilities.

Morreale: Hunterdon Healthcare is the only hospital in the county, [located in Northwest New Jersey]. It was started in 1956, in an effort to improve the health of the population and community. As an organization we kind of have a 60-year head start on population health. It’s still a standalone facility, we have just under 200 inpatient beds, and do just under a million ambulatory visits a year.

Campbell: What are some of the initiatives you’re working on right now? What are some of the reasons that drove you to CHIME in terms of the learnings you expect to hear from your peers?

Morreale: The initiatives we’re working on in the healthcare system right now are dedicated to two propositions. One is to improve usability; how do I make the variety of systems we have more user friendly? And secondly, a consolidation effort; looking across our vast number of software tools and trying to consolidate them. Prior to my arrival at Hunterdon two years ago, every department bought whatever they wanted. As a result, I have 5 document management systems, 6 faxing software applications, etc. We’re trying to consolidate and replace with enterprise level tools when we can. Next year we’re going to start doing core replacements around our financial systems, and that’s going to be a rip and replace. We’re planning an initiative around creating an access center, i.e. one telephone call to concierge level service with the health system.

Campbell: Tell me a little about where archival fits into this. With the systems you look to replace, have you gone through that evaluation of migrating versus archiving?

Morreale: We have not, and for several reasons: A majority of the healthcare tools that are out there don’t have a good process for archiving, deleting, or massaging patient records, at least at the patient level, which is always a challenge. However, we do have criteria for retaining data, predicated on state and federal mandates. Right now everything is in a tiered data structure. Our more transactional data is on a state drive, our deeper archival data is on EMC, some IBM storage in the middle, but my intent is to go pure solid state. This will add cost, but increase retrieval speed and simplify the environment. But even in that environment I’m just continually adding and saving data. I’m never really deleting anything. So there are records that are 25 years old, that I no longer need, and I have no means of getting rid of them.

Campbell: Have you evaluated any archival solutions that are healthcare specific? Tell me about the challenges you see in the vendor marketplace for archival solutions.

Morreale: Well on the technology side, I think there’s a wealth of tools, but their weakness is in the healthcare applications. In my EMR I do not have the capacity to delete a record. I absolutely do not have the capacity to delete part of a record. If you’re in my system longitudinally, can I get rid of those lab results you had 8 years ago? No, and I think that’s a problem. It costs me money to store it, manage it and keep it secure. But then in the event of legal action, if I have it I have to produce it, it’s discoverable. I would rather only present for discovery that which I’m required to present for discovery. If the data had been purged by policy and no longer there then I’m no longer responsible for producing it.

Campbell: As part of the overall portfolio strategy, do you see yourself consolidating applications and migrating from one EMR to another?

Morreale: Eventually I think we’re going to have to, and we’re targeting 2020 or 2021 as the year to make that jump. That is my opportunity, and only opportunity, to clear records.

Campbell: Is there hope that in that time there are some advancements made?

Morreale: I think it would be nice, but I don’t see it happening, I don’t hear any vendors talking about providing tools that do that. Then again we have to ask ourselves, how long do we keep our EMRs and is anybody running an EMR they were running 20 years ago? Chances are no. I think over that course of time we generally take all we can from a product and at some point we start looking for additional functionalities, newer user interfaces, and more bells & whistles

Campbell: Shifting gears, what is your data governance strategy within the organization?

Morreale: Data governance is pretty straight forward. We have our applications tiered for priority, and as a result of that, the data is tiered. We ask the primary departments to be the titular owner of that data, in that the patient is the real owner. We look at IT services as being the police – the ones who stores it, protects it and keeps it under lock and key. When there is a challenge around data, it always manifests in reports: what is the length of stay in system A, is it not the same as in system B? With great effort, a year ago, we undertook building out a data dictionary. To this regard, I know that when I’m using field MX4233 in my EHR, I know it’s a patient address and that it is defined in this way. Then we’ve carried that across to the other clinical systems that have that data. It is by no means complete, it’s a continuous effort, and it’s massive with the 160 different systems. We really concentrated on those items that people are regularly reporting on. As such, when I produce an end of day admission report in system A it’s also the same in system B.

Campbell: What’s the vehicle or mechanism that you’re using?

Morreale: This is one of the examples where we built our own tool. We went out and created a data lake: we’re taking a snap shot of the data, putting in the data lake, normalizing it, and then consolidating all our reporting out of the data lake. So, at least my reports are more consistent than they were prior.

Campbell: Where do you see an opportunity for innovators in the vendor space?

Morreale: I think there’s opportunities in home health, which is pretty much owned by a few big companies with technology that’s a little dated.

I think there is a whole field of healthcare to be discovered in social media. How do we capture that? How do we integrate into that world? How do we use that to attract future patients? Most health systems tend to grow by buying physician practices or expanding their market, which is a pretty traditional means of doing that work. However, I think an extraordinarily strong mobile presence and web presence can start to attract the 20 and 30 year olds who aren’t really using healthcare now, who I want if I’m in a shared risk environment. Use that as a tool to create that sticky relationship between you and my health system so that when you do need our services, we’re the natural choice.

I think the value proposition around that has to be very high, but it’s certainly difficult to compute. We’re putting a lot of effort into that arena. My development team is looking at creating what we’re calling a ‘membership model’ for the health system.  It’s essentially taking the concepts around Netflix and American Express: you become a member, and incorporate that into how I deliver care. If I can convince you to be a member, I can give you one telephone call scheduling; I can stop leakage out of my physician offices by scheduling your next appointment as you’re walking out the door; or schedule that x-ray or that minor surgery you might need. I can broadcast educational information to your mobile or home device. I can create social platforms for you to talk to other people with your disease state. I can do all of those things as a background product, but at the same point I’m creating that sticky relationship between you and my health system.

We’re also looking at integrating wearable data. We are fortunate enough to be the in the healthiest and wealthiest county in New Jersey, so we think there’s the capacity to offer the service to our community: let us monitor your Fitbit or your wearable device data, tell you how you’re doing on your health effort, and give you an opportunity to earn points. We have a points program in our membership model – buying broccoli instead of bread; going to the gym –  those sort of things. And I think that kind of stuff is going to be more of my future than buying physician offices.

Campbell: There seems to be a diminishing return there or rather a saturation to that model.

Morreale: I think so. How many physician offices can you have in a community? How far can your reach go? If I’m doing it through mobile and social media, my reach is greater. I’m not limited to 20 miles or 25 miles. I can be attracting or engaging people who are 50-60 miles away. I can help you take care of your parents who live in Phoenix or back in Boston, I can do all of those kinds of things. We think there’s some potential there. It’s going to be one of our big investments in 2017 – to further define that model and see if we can make it fly.

Campbell: Certainly enlightening and inspiring.

Morreale: I think it’s just a different way of looking at what we do. I don’t like to get caught up in the technology. I know a lot of CIOs who get caught up in the technology and the toys, and the toys are cool. I mean let’s face it, but at the end of the day I’m doing healthcare, and that’s about people.  How do I make the experience easy for you and me, or family, and deliver quality, convenience, and access? I think that’s where a large portion of our future has to be.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

About Daniel Morreale
Daniel Morreale is CIO at Hunterdon Healthcare, a community hospital based in central New Jersey. He has held CIO roles at a number of organizations, including Riverside Healthcare System, Kingsbrook Health System, and Atlanticare. A CHIME fellow, Morreale was the recipient of CHIME’s’ Innovator of the Year’ and ‘Collaboration of the Year’ Awards, and was recognized by Computerworld Magazine as one of the ‘Premier 100 IT Leaders.’ He also received the Safety Net Award from the National Association of Public Hospitals, and the Smithsonian Center of Innovative Technology Honors Laureate Award. Morreale is past-President of the New Jersey Chapter of HIMSS.

About Justin Campbell
Justin is Vice President, Strategy, at Galen Healthcare Solutions. He is responsible for market intelligence, segmentation, business and market development and competitive strategy. Justin has been consulting in Health IT for over 10 years, guiding clients in the implementation, integration and optimization of clinical systems. He has been on the front lines of system replacement and data migration and is passionate about advancing interoperability in healthcare and harnessing analytical insights to realize improvements in patient care. Justin can be found on Twitter at @TJustinCampbell and LinkedIn.