Customer Spotlight: Information Technology Drives Positive Evolution at Murray-Calloway County Hospital

Source: http://www.meditech.com/

In order to enhance the quality of patient care and grow as a regional provider, Murray-Calloway County Hospital(Murray, KY), knew they were on the right path when they became a MEDITECH customer in 2002. Since going LIVE with MEDITECH, the hospital continues to build on its Health Care Information System (HCIS), and according to Regina Davison, director of information systems at Murray-Calloway, the hospital is well on its way to becoming a state-of-the-art health care facility.

Driven and committed, Davison and the entire I.T. team work hard in preparing the health care organization for its I.T. related projects. Davison credits the dedication of her I.T. staff, who have become integral components behind the success of many recent I.T. initiatives at Murray-Calloway.

We recently had the opportunity to chat with Davison to learn about her latest duties, challenges, and accomplishments as director of information systems, and how MEDITECH continues to play a key role throughout Murray-Calloway's exciting evolution.

MEDITECH: How have your previous I.T. experiences helped to prepare you for your newest role as director of information systems at Murray-Calloway? What are some challenges you are currently facing?

Davison: My health care experience spans back 20 plus years, accumulated from two other hospitals. Prior to accepting my position here at Murray-Calloway in 1996, I held a lead role in computer operations at a MEDITECH MAGIC facility here in Western Kentucky, where I assumed the role of lead computer operator for eight years. Upon accepting my position here at Murray-Calloway, I was hired in first as a computer programmer, writing and modifying code for our in-house system, which included writing code for our MEDITECH conversion. After the conversion, my role then shifted into financial systems specialist. Then, in May 2008, I was appointed as director of information systems, after having served as interim on a couple of occasions.

Health care I.T. is a very interesting, intriguing, and demanding field. Assisting others, giving them the tools needed to do their jobs, and influencing patient care in a positive way is extremely rewarding and something that we strive for here at Murray-Calloway.

Right now, our organization's main focus is to grow as a regional provider. Since our facility is in the midst of a large expansion, we are currently putting forth major recruiting efforts in order to get both generalized and specialized practitioners on board. Our new addition, which includes 187,000 square feet of additional space, is expected to open very soon, hopefully by March or April. The extra space will provide our organization with a new surgical suite, and new patient ancillary departments. It will also allow us to offer private rooms to all of our patients—it's quite expansive. Needless to say, we’re all anticipating our grand opening with great excitement.

MEDITECH: Influencing patient care and guiding I.T. projects is a team effort and requires a commitment from everyone involved. What is your leadership style like and how do you lead and motivate your staff members for I.T. related projects?

Davison: I believe that team-oriented projects help to keep our I.T. staff motivated—while we may all have our own responsibilities throughout the day, our common goal is to be available for one another whenever a challenging situation may present itself.

For example, last January our region was plagued by an ice storm which left our facility running on a back-up generator and without power for three days. I live 30 miles away from the hospital and due to the severity of the storm, I could not get out to the main roads. I tried contacting the hospital to let them know I could not make it in. Unfortunately, as a result of the storm, the phone lines at the hospital were down. Luckily, via cell phone, I was able to get in touch with our system administrator who was already at the hospital. He calmly told me not to worry and that he and two hospital administrators were communicating with radios and having extensive round-the-clock meetings. He assured me that he and the other I.T. staff would stay on-site for as long as was needed.

I was extremely relieved knowing that throughout all the chaos, everything was being handled appropriately. It's times like these when you find out what your organization is really capable of and fortunately for us, our teams are fully committed to patient care, no matter what. I'm truly fortunate to work with such a great group of dedicated individuals.

MEDITECH: It's wonderful to know you have such a strong and supportive relationship with your team. How has your relationship with these members and other executives helped to emphasize the importance of I.T. in the care setting?

Davison: Our management team puts great focus on the importance of patient care and patient safety, and this has been one of the main reasons our facility continues to move forward with our MEDITECH solution.

Since we plan to go up with Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE) very soon, we recently invited one of our on-staff physicians to be the first physician member of our I.T. team. In order for an I.T. project of this nature to be successful, it's essential for executives and physicians to work together. With the help of Dr. Williams and other on-staff physicians we are confident that we can put together a good CPOE team that will help us move forward with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). We want the physicians to know and recognize that we not only want their input, but need their input for this to be a success.

MEDITECH: In addition to CPOE, how have MEDITECH's other integrated solutions benefited Murray-Calloway and what do you like most about the system from an I.T. perspective?

Davison: Integration is vital to our organization. With an integrated system, we have been able to gain huge improvements in operational efficiency and in care delivery. The Enterprise Medical Record (EMR) is providing our physicians seamless and immediate access to x-ray and lab reports and by using the system on a daily basis, medical staff members are able to make clinical decisions more quickly and efficiently.

The ability to write custom reports and build our own customer defined screens has been a huge win for us and we've also been able to create our own patient labels, bar codes, and special forms without ever having to involve a third party vendor. During our Scanning and Archiving implementation, we used our own print shop and imported bar codes to our pre-printed forms.

MEDITECH: Health care is constantly evolving and MEDITECH is actively monitoring the latest legislation, particularly the areas which impact our industry the most. As a MEDITECH customer, do you feel you are well positioned for ARRA? How is this latest piece of legislation affecting your health care organization's I.T. strategic direction?

Davison: We are confident we will be able to meet the Meaningful Use requirements set forth by the government. As mentioned, we recently implemented Scanning and Archiving and we are already noticing improvements. Our Scheduling, Admissions, Medical Records, and Cardiopulmonary departments are now scanning documents into patient charts on a daily basis.

In order to prepare for our CPOE rollout, physicians are being trained on e-signature and we are seeing a drastic improvement in medication administration since we implemented MEDITECH's Bedside Medication Verification (BMV) solution a little over a year ago.

In preparation for ARRA, perhaps one of the most vital projects we've been working on this past year is implementing LSS at five of our hospital-owned physician practices. So far, one practice is completely LIVE with the billing and clinical components of LSS, including e-Prescribing, and we are looking forward to getting our other practices LIVE soon.

MEDITECH: As you continue to expand and add more applications and functionality to your MEDITECH HCIS, what are some of the other I.T. projects are you currently working on?

Davison: Due to the many changes coming in health care and because we are on an ongoing mission to provide our patients with the safest, highest quality health care in the region, we will continue to evaluate and implement the latest technology solutions available. That being said, MEDITECH will remain a key element as we move forward. As MEDITECH continues to update its system, we will continue to update ours—with the Client/Server 5.6 update next on our agenda.

In the next year we plan to implement MEDITECH's Operating Room Management (ORM) solution, we hope to complete the install of a new wireless system and patient monitoring system, and our team meetings are already under way for our CPOE project.

Even though it's been a challenging year, it's also been extremely rewarding. Everyone at Murray-Calloway is excited about our organization's positive transformation and because we continue to take full advantage of MEDITECH's integrated solutions, we are reaching our goals and becoming a leading-edge health care facility.