Medical Center Hospital Chief Information Officer Linda Carpenter and her team cover just about anything the hospital system uses every day.
Her 44-person department covers anything from computers to systems, images and even the telephone systems, for the hospital and its clinics.
Recently, the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) announced that Medical Center Hospital has earned 2021 CHIME Digital Health Most Wired recognition as a certified acute level 8 and ambulatory level 7.
The CHIME Digital Health Most Wired program conducts an annual survey to assess how effectively healthcare organizations apply core and advanced technologies into their clinical and business programs to improve health and care in their communities.
“… We go through a process of we have to apply, we have to answer a questionnaire of 160 questions about our use of those technologies. But really, based on the use of the technologies that are in place … you’re recognized as a most wired hospital, which means basically that you’ve …implemented and have adoption of those technologies and the results are intended to improve patient safety and outcomes to drive change in healthcare,” Carpenter said.
Pretty much anything anyone does during the day whether it’s looking up patient records or making a phone call, that is Carpenter’s team.
“We support those computers and the system that provides that information,” she said.
The hospital also has electronic medical records.
“Our patient records are in our EMR, but our EMR now has connectivity with other EMRs through interoperability. That’s a nationwide effort to be able to share information from one hospital to another.
“… For instance, if I’m a patient and I go to Dallas and Dallas participates in interoperability, then I don’t have to take copies of my records to Dallas. When they log in, they’ll see Linda’s been at Medical Center Hospital and has agreed to share her records, so I can see those now in my system instead of having to request those and delay healthcare,” Carpenter said.
Things change pretty much daily in Carpenter’s world and she’s seen the evolution having been with the hospital for going on 31 years.
“I remember a room full of paper patient records and those processes before we had an electronic health record and people recording their dictation on cassette tapes and playing those back. There has been quite a bit of change. It’s been really exciting,” she said.
On the award, Carpenter said she was very happy to receive the recognition.
“Our team has worked really hard to get everything in place, but it also says a lot about our providers and our clinicians using that technology,” she said. “You can provide the technology all day long, but really it’s the use of that technology, the adoption of it from our clinicians that really makes the difference in the patients’ outcomes.”
Carpenter said there are some people who are happy to adopt and others who want to do things the way they’ve always been done. Ultimately, people come around.
“… Overall, our adoption rate’s been very high. I’m just really proud of it. We’ll continue to strive for next level next year as we implement additional technologies and get the adoption of those technologies in place and expand our tele-health and our digital front door. We’ll continue to strive for higher,” Carpenter said.
A digital front door is when you have an app on your phone, like an MCH app, and when you open it you can see parts of your record, she said.
“You can pay a bill; you can ask for an appointment; you can refill medication; you could look up providers all in one application,” Carpenter said.
She added that end users are surveyed and they get a lot of good feedback.
“… The satisfaction level is pretty high. Of course, there are times when someone’s computer doesn’t work or their workflow has changed and we need to help modify our systems to accommodate those workflows and we work through that with them. So I think we’ve got a very high satisfaction and a great relationship with our users.”
When they have to make changes, they are done in a test environment “and we’ll have those subject matter experts do the testing with us to validate yes this is what we want; yes this works; and then we’ll work with them to ensure that end users are notified and have training before we put those changes into production.”
“We don’t want to surprise anybody,” Carpenter added.
Medical Center President and CEO Russell Tippin said the IT team are some of the biggest unsung heroes of the past two years.
“Their dedication and ability to adapt and improve our information technology systems throughout this pandemic has been nothing short of remarkable. In the ever-changing landscape of healthcare, it is vital to have an IT team as dedicated as the one at MCH,” Tippin said in a news release.
