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CHIME Foundation Names Connection 2017 Partner Award Winner
SAN ANTONIO, Texas, Nov. 2, 2017 – Healthcare organizations and the CIOs who are responsible for selecting, implementing and managing their IT systems need reliable, compatible technologies to ensure safe, quality healthcare. They also need experienced and informed partners in industry who support them in their mission.
Jennifer Ramstrom, CFCHE, Vice President of Vertical Strategy & Business Development, Connection
Connection, a company based in Merrimack, N.H., that specializes in connecting healthcare customers with suitable technology solutions, has developed a number of processes, services and tools to meet their needs. Beyond that, Connection’s employees have served as dedicated volunteers with the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) and other organizations. Their contributions earned Connection the 2017 CHIME Foundation Partner Award.
The award, which is given annually to a CHIME Foundation firm, was announced today at the CHIME17 Fall CIO Forum in San Antonio, Texas. Jennifer Ramstrom, Connection’s vice president of vertical strategy and business development, accepted the award on behalf of Connection.
“Connection, and Jennifer in particular, have made a big impact on CHIME over the years,” said Marc Probst, CIO of Intermountain Healthcare in Salt Lake City, Utah, and the chair of the CHIME Foundation Board. “Jennifer spearheaded our CFCHE (CHIME Foundation Certified Healthcare Executive) efforts as the committee chair and has been a strong advocate for setting the highest standards for industry representatives.”
The CFCHE program was launched in June 2017 as a certification program that demonstrates recipients have the knowledge of experienced healthcare IT industry employees and ensures that the recipient shares the same commitment to quality as a CIO. The first exam was given in September, and 24 Foundation firm employees – including Ramstrom – passed.
“It is an honor to be recognized with the CHIME Foundation Partner Award,” Ramstrom said. “Connection’s healthcare practice has grown tremendously since it was launched in 2006, and the opportunity to partner with the CHIME Foundation and work with the CHIME community has been enlightening and invigorating.”
To learn more about the CHIME Foundation Partner Award, click here.
About CHIME
The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) is an executive organization dedicated to serving chief information officers (CIOs) and other senior healthcare IT leaders. With more than 2,400 CIO members and over 150 healthcare IT vendors and professional services firms, CHIME provides a highly interactive, trusted environment enabling senior professional and industry leaders to collaborate; exchange best practices; address professional development needs; and advocate the effective use of information management to improve the health and healthcare in the communities they serve. For more information, please visit chimecentral.org.
Contact
CHIME:
Candace Stuart
Director of Communications and Public Relations
734.665.0000
[email protected]Posted 11.2.2017 -
Retired Encore CEO Dana Sellers Receives 2017 CHIME Foundation Industry Leader Award
SAN ANTONIO, Texas, Nov. 2, 2017 – Dana Sellers, co-founder and retired CEO of Encore Health Resources, has spent her 30-year career championing the use of healthcare IT to improve patient care and outcomes. A skilled leader, she has been praised by the chief information officers (CIOs) she served and the staff she oversaw for her people-focused, solutions-driven approach.
The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) today awarded Sellers the 2017 CHIME Foundation Industry Leader Award for her exceptional dedication and contributions to the healthcare IT industry. The award, the highest honor given to a Foundation firm member, was announced at the CHIME17 Fall CIO Forum in San Antonio, Texas.
Dana Sellers, Co-founder & retired CEO, Encore Health Resources
“Dana has been a huge asset to our industry,” said Marc Probst, CIO of Intermountain Healthcare in Salt Lake City, Utah, and the chair of the CHIME Foundation Board. “Whether implementing EHRs that physicians truly embrace, helping us grow our population health capabilities or finding ways to coax more value from our data, Dana always was looking for solutions that met our needs.”
Sellers has held numerous prominent positions, including as a partner in IBM’s Global Business Solutions, where she oversaw the U.S. healthcare provider team; as president and COO of Healthlink; and as CEO of Encore Health Resources in Houston, which she co-founded with Ivo Nelson in 2009. Under her leadership, Encore served more than 190 providers and completed more than 500 projects in the U.S. that advanced healthcare IT. She is now the retired CEO of Encore and a member of the board at emids, which acquired Encore earlier this year. She also has served on the boards of CHIME, the CHIME Foundation and the CHIME Education Foundation.
Sellers has witnessed the vast changes in healthcare IT that have taken place over the past three decades, and the benefits that effective implementation of healthcare IT have had for organizations, providers, payers and patients. She is recognized as a pioneer in electronic health record (EHR) strategy and rollouts and identifying IT solutions that support value-based care. Although she has been at the forefront of many of those changes, she sees her role as part of a team who collectively worked to implement technologies that facilitate care.
“I am passionate about healthcare, and I have been privileged to be able to pursue that passion as a career, and share that passion with others,” she said. “I’m really just a small part of the work that has taken place. It’s truly a tribute to my team and the providers we have worked with, and to their dedication,” she said of the award.
To learn more about the CHIME Foundation Industry Leader Award, click here.
About CHIME
The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) is an executive organization dedicated to serving chief information officers (CIOs) and other senior healthcare IT leaders. With more than 2,400 CIO members and over 150 healthcare IT vendors and professional services firms, CHIME provides a highly interactive, trusted environment enabling senior professional and industry leaders to collaborate; exchange best practices; address professional development needs; and advocate the effective use of information management to improve the health and healthcare in the communities they serve. For more information, please visit chimecentral.org.
Contact
CHIME:
Candace Stuart
Director of Communications and Public Relations
734.665.0000
[email protected]Posted 11.2.2017 -
Saint Luke’s Health System, HCTec Share 2017 CHIME Collaboration Award
SAN ANTONIO, Texas, Nov. 2, 2017 – About three years ago, the IT department at Saint Luke’s Health System (SLHS) in Kansas City, Mo., was stretched at the seams. SLHS was implementing a new electronic medical record (EMR) and a revenue cycle management system that added to the workload and required frequent switching between tasks. Staff were required to manage projects that didn’t always suit their capabilities and interests, and turnover began to increase.
Deborah Gash, CIO, Saint Luke’s Health System
Deborah Gash, CIO at SLHS, weighed her options. She could make new hires, but it would take six months and cost approximately $170,000 per employee to make them productive. She could outsource, but that also was costly. Instead, she turned to HCTec, a company based in Brentwood, Tenn., that provides healthcare workforce solutions.
Working together, they developed and implemented a strategy that cut staff turnover from 15 percent to 3 percent, increased morale and overall productivity, and to date has saved SLHS $9.2 million. HCTec is using the model to serve healthcare networks across the country.
The success of their partnership also has earned them the 2017 CHIME Collaboration Award. The honor was announced today at the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives’ CHIME17 Fall CIO Forum in San Antonio, Texas. The award recognizes a collaborative effort between a CIO who is a CHIME member and a CHIME Foundation firm who together author a paper that details their innovative collaboration and its outcomes.
“HCTec worked with us to identify the root cause of problems and develop a solution that allowed the IT staff to focus on tasks suitable to their skills and expertise,” said Gash. “The time our staff spends on maintenance and errors has decreased by almost half, giving them more time to devote to new, professional development. They are more productive, and importantly, more satisfied, which is reflected in the dramatic drop in our turnover rate.”
The bi-modal strategy splits tasks into two categories: general operation and growth and business transformation. SLHS and HCTec then created two workforce teams, with HCTec’s remote managed services team offering support in general operations. That freed up the SLHS IT staff for strategic planning initiatives. SLHS also saw a boost in its customer satisfaction scores after the implementation.
“We are honored to be a part of this award and to deliver these tangible cost and efficiency results to Saint Luke’s,” said HCTec Founder William Bartholomew. “Our Managed Services business delivers similar results for healthcare organizations across the country and we believe this is the optimal way to support EMRs going forward.”
“This is a great example of how CIOs and industry can work together to better serve their healthcare organizations and their patients,” said CHIME President and CEO Russell Branzell. “The collaboration allows the IT staff to concentrate on rewarding projects that can raise quality and improve the bottom line. It’s a win for everyone.”
To learn more about the CHIME Collaboration Award, click here.
About CHIME
The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) is an executive organization dedicated to serving chief information officers (CIOs) and other senior healthcare IT leaders. With more than 2,400 CIO members and over 150 healthcare IT vendors and professional services firms, CHIME provides a highly interactive, trusted environment enabling senior professional and industry leaders to collaborate; exchange best practices; address professional development needs; and advocate the effective use of information management to improve the health and healthcare in the communities they serve. For more information, please visit chimecentral.org.
Contact
CHIME:
Candace Stuart
Director of Communications and Public Relations
734.665.0000
[email protected]Posted 11.2.2017 -
Medical Center Health System’s CIO, CEO Turn Massive EHR Project into Award Winner
SAN ANTONIO, Texas, Nov 1, 2017 – When the Medical Center Health System (MCHS) in Odessa, Texas, learned five years ago that the electronic health record (EHR) software it had been using for 25 years was being sunsetted, the leadership embraced it as an opportunity to bring about change. CEO William Webster and Gary Barnes, the system’s longstanding CIO, created a plan to implement a new EHR. What they and supportive staff throughout the system achieved was much more: a unified organization that puts the patient at the center.
In recognition of this achievement, the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) today awarded Webster and Barnes the 2017 CHIME-AHA Transformational Leadership Award. Given annually in conjunction with the American Hospital Association (AHA), it honors a CEO and CIO who recognize the benefits of a strong partnership that uses IT to significantly change the delivery of healthcare.
Key to MCHS’ success was a decision to unify its analytics team and data governance structure, which allowed MCHS to consolidate and standardize multiple data sources. They also created two distinct but complementary chief medical information officer (CMIO) positions, with one for inpatient settings and one for outpatient care.
“As cost and quality are increasingly measured not by care episodes but by overall patient outcomes, optimizing transitions in care has become a focal point for health systems,” Barnes said. “Bringing together the expertise of both inpatient and outpatient domains ensures that the insights garnered from analytics fully address the continuum of care.”
The EHR plan included regional partners and the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Medical Center in Odessa. “We knew it would be an opportunity to not only improve our relationship with our regional partners but it would advance care and efficiency for our patients, physicians and employees,” Webster said. “Although it was a very large and complex project, MCHS was able to stay on task, focused and resilient in order to meet the go-live deadline date given to us.”
They not only met their go-live date but they also remained under budget. Clinician adoption and usage has been strong, and thanks to a voice recognition mobile device application, they have experienced improvements in turnaround time for reports at reduced costs.
To learn more about the CHIME-AHA Transformational Leadership Award, go here.
About CHIME
The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) is an executive organization dedicated to serving chief information officers (CIOs) and other senior healthcare IT leaders. With more than 2,400 CIO members and over 150 healthcare IT vendors and professional services firms, CHIME provides a highly interactive, trusted environment enabling senior professional and industry leaders to collaborate; exchange best practices; address professional development needs; and advocate the effective use of information management to improve the health and healthcare in the communities they serve. For more information, please visit chimecentral.org.
Contact
CHIME:
Candace Stuart
Director of Communications and Public Relations
734.665.0000
[email protected]Posted 11.2.2017 -
CHIME Honors Indiana HIE VP Chuck Christian with Outstanding Service Award
SAN ANTONIO, Texas, Nov. 1, 2017 – Charles (Chuck) Christian’s commitment to the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) predates his present position as a vice president at the Indiana Health Information Exchange in Indianapolis, his two-year stint as a vice president and CIO at St. Francis Hospital in Columbus, Ga., and goes well into his 23-year tenure at Good Samaritan Hospital in Vincennes, Ind. Over the years he has served as:
- Chair of the CHIME Foundation Board (2016)
- Chair of the CHIME Board (2015)
- CHIME Board chair-elect (2014)
- Chair of the CHIME Policy Steering Committee (2011, 2013 and 2016)
- Member of the CHIME Policy Steering Committee (2010 to present)
- Member of the CHIME Board (2002-2004)
He’s won numerous awards from CHIME, including the John E. Gall HIMSS/CHIME CIO of the Year (2010), the CHIME Collaboration Award (2010) and this year’s Federal Public Policy Award for CIO Leadership.
Today he added one more honor to his extensive list of accomplishments: the 2017 CHIME Outstanding Service Award. The award recognizes a member who has shown extraordinary dedication to CHIME through participation in CHIME programs and volunteer service. The award was announced at the CHIME17 Fall CIO Forum in San Antonio, Texas.CHIME Board Chair Liz Johnson, CIO of Acute Care Hospitals & Applied Clinical Informatics at Tenet Healthcare Corporation, praised Christian for his leadership, mentorship and commitment to CHIME and the CIO profession. “As CIOs and CHIME members, we are all better at what we do because of Chuck’s influence,” she said. “He sets the example of what it means to be a thoughtful and committed leader who has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to advancing health IT through his incredible service to our industry.”
Christian is vice president of technology and engagement at the Indiana Health Information Exchange, which operates the nation’s largest interorganizational clinical data repository. He is a charter member of CHIME, a CHIME Fellow and a CHIME Lifetime Member. Besides his extensive service on boards and committees, he also has been a member of the CHIME Boot Camp faculty and a popular forum speaker.
“I have had the pleasure to grow with CHIME and watch our roles as CIOs evolve from IT specialists to valuable members in our organizations’ leadership teams,” Christian said. “I am blessed to work alongside colleagues at CHIME who share my passion for improving patient care through health IT, and I am honored that they selected me for this award.”
To learn more about the CHIME Outstanding Service Award, go here.
About CHIME
The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) is an executive organization dedicated to serving chief information officers (CIOs) and other senior healthcare IT leaders. With more than 2,400 CIO members and over 150 healthcare IT vendors and professional services firms, CHIME provides a highly interactive, trusted environment enabling senior professional and industry leaders to collaborate; exchange best practices; address professional development needs; and advocate the effective use of information management to improve the health and healthcare in the communities they serve. For more information, please visit chimecentral.org.
Contact
CHIME:
Candace Stuart
Director of Communications and Public Relations
734.665.0000
[email protected]Posted 11.1.2017 -
‘Smart Ribbon’ Tool Earns Digital Leader CHIME’s Innovator Award
SAN ANTONIO, Texas, Nov. 1, 2017 – Imagine a setting where physicians have at their fingertips not only the cost of a medication, a lab test or of a scan but also the adverse drug reactions, the estimated blood loss and consequent risk of anemia or the patient’s cumulative exposure to radiation from imaging tests. Add to this scenario that the information appears unobtrusively with no clicking and on any electronic medical record (EMR) at any point of care.
Fernando Martinez not only imagined it, he helped make it a reality through the Austin-based Texas Hospital Association (THA) Foundation Center for Technology Innovation. Martinez, the chief digital officer at THA and the president and CEO of the THA Foundation, was honored today by the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) with the 2017 CHIME Innovator of the Year Award. The award was announced at the CHIME17 Fall CIO Forum in San Antonio, Texas.
The award is given annually to a CHIME member whose creative application of IT and innovative solutions brought value to his or her organization. With Martinez at the helm, the Center for Technology Innovation identified a unique, innovative nascent technology that had the potential to significantly address two major pain points commonly raised by Texas hospital CEOs: management of cost and variability of care. The result was the THA Smart Ribbon, a digital tool to help clinicians make informed decisions based on cost and clinical data. Implementation of the THA Smart Ribbon using 55 providers at the Parkland Health and Hospital System in Dallas resulted in a cost savings of $430,444 over 71 days. The pre-post intervention study also demonstrated the predicted reduction in variation of care.
Parkland has expanded the use of the THA Smart Ribbon to all providers at Parkland Hospital and three more hospital systems have the tool in production or are implementing it. Several other hospital systems are in the final stages of joining the program and THA expects increased adoption will continue over the next few years.
“One key element to the success of the THA Smart Ribbon is the fact that it is EMR agnostic,” Martinez said. “It does not directly integrate or interact with the EMR. For instance, there is no need for additional testing or modification when EMR upgrades or modifications are made. This is a significant benefit for IT teams.”
CHIME Board Chair Liz Johnson, CIO of Acute Care Hospitals & Applied Clinical Informatics at Tenet Healthcare Corporation, noted that other hospital associations are evaluating the approach as a possible tool for their members. “As CIOs, we want to empower clinicians with relevant information presented precisely when they need it,” she said. “Fernando has given us a solution that is compatible with their workflow, but equally important, he has shared it with the broader community. This is well-deserved recognition of a truly innovative IT leader.”
To learn more about the 2017 CHIME Innovator of the Year Award, go here.
About CHIME
The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) is an executive organization dedicated to serving chief information officers (CIOs) and other senior healthcare IT leaders. With more than 2,400 CIO members and over 150 healthcare IT vendors and professional services firms, CHIME provides a highly interactive, trusted environment enabling senior professional and industry leaders to collaborate; exchange best practices; address professional development needs; and advocate the effective use of information management to improve the health and healthcare in the communities they serve. For more information, please visit chimecentral.org.
Contact
CHIME:
Candace Stuart
Director of Communications and Public Relations
734.665.0000
[email protected]Posted 11.1.2017 -
Philippines hospital installs Novarad PACS/RIS
Medical software company enters into agreement with Westlake Medical Center
SAN PEDRO, PHILLIPINES – November 1, 2017 – Novarad Corporation, a leader in the development of medical imaging software, has recently entered into contract with Westlake Medical Center, located in San Pedro, Philippines, to install its PACS and RIS software as part of an effort to improve the patient experience.
“Westlake Medical Center is in the heart of a densely populated residential and commercial community making it easily accessible to the surrounding population, and we are proud to support them in their mission to provide compassionate and effective care to patients,” said Fred Trovato, Executive Vice President of Worldwide Sales at Novarad.
Westlake Medical Center is a 92-bed facility that is part of the network of hospitals of Mt. Grace Hospitals. It provides basic and advanced medical, surgical and dental care. The medical center’s vision is to be the preferred healthcare center for patient and family well-being.
Novarad offers PACS, RIS, cardiology, orthopedic, and mammography systems and has more than 1000 installations worldwide. To learn more about Novarad, follow the company on Twitter @NovaradCorp, or visit www.novarad.net.
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Founded by a radiologist over 20 years ago, Novarad has demonstrated Best in KLAS expertise in the three phases of enterprise imaging—viewing, workflow, and storage—which allows it to customize meaningful enterprise imaging solutions to fit the unique needs of each healthcare professional. Providing both easily deployed modular products and fully customizable enterprise imaging solutions, the company has installed over 1000 systems globally with KLAS-confirmed, market-leading retention rates. The company is best known for product functionality and constant development; its products have a reputation for being easy to learn and use, yet feature-rich for even the most advanced users. Visit Novarad.net to learn more.
Media Contact:
Kristi Alvarado, Media Relations Contact at Novarad
801.642.1001
[email protected]Posted 11.1.2017