Best Hospital IT 2016: #4 Large Hospital
St. Elizabeth Healthcare, Kentucky
IT Staff: 129
Overall Score: 64.14%
For St. Elizabeth Healthcare's Vice President and Chief Information Officer Alex Rodriguez, health IT's current trajectory is placing patient engagement and improved communication with clinical staff front and center.
Edgewood, Kentucky-based St. Elizabeth's current initiatives in these areas involve mobile technology and it's already having an effect on current processes.
"The introduction of this technology will require us to revisit current workflows and redesign – in some instances from scratch – new ways of doing business," Rodriguez said.
At number 4 on the list of Best Hospital IT Departments in the Medium category, St. Elizabeth is currently working on the transition from a fee-for-service model, into value-based care. In doing so, the organization hopes to deliver better care to its community.
Rodriguez and his team have supported the health system for eight years, working to standardize its care delivery through the use of an enterprise electronic health record and enterprise financial platform.
"We now intend to accelerate our efforts to harness the clinical and financial data available to our clinicians and model outcomes that reduce expense, improve clinical outcomes and looks at the total patient experience across out continuum of services," Rodriguez said.
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"Although the transition to a value-based delivery care model is changing slower than expected, we do believe that the long-term direction of healthcare reimbursement is committed to this transition of value based care," he added.
For Rodriguez, the most difficult change in health IT was the adoption of EHRs across both the acute care setting and physicians' office. While meaningful use incentives fueled this major shift, the widespread adoption in such a short time has been a surprise.
However, he doesn't see the shift in a negative light. The IT department is highly connected to the rest of the health system, which makes for better communication and patient care. Rodriguez does admit this puts greater strain on his department to stay ahead of evolving security risks, but his team is constantly working to keep up with the challenge.
Workplace culture was one of 87 questions senior executives (CIO, CMIOs, etc.), directors of IT, clinical and systems analysts, technicians, help desk staff and others responded to on our survey.
Overall Ranking
| Question | Very dissatisfied or Disagree completely | Dissatisfied or Disagree | Neutral | Satisfied or Agree | Very satisfied or Agree completely |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Question | Very dissatisfied or Disagree completely | Dissatisfied or Disagree | Neutral | Satisfied or Agree | Very satisfied or Agree completely |
| How satisfied you are working for the IT department at this organization? | 3.1% | 0.8% | 6.2% | 25.6% | 64.3% |
| How satisfied are you with your job and elements of your day-to-day work? | 3.2% | 2.4% | 7.1% | 27.8% | 59.5% |
| How satisfied are you with your immediate work unit, team or IT department group? | 1.6% | 2.4% | 5.6% | 29.4% | 61.1% |
| How satisfied are you with your direct supervisor, manager or group head, the person you report to directly? | 1.6% | 0.0% | 11.3% | 33.9% | 53.2% |
| How satisfied are you with the senior management and leadership of your organization? | 1.7% | 0.8% | 9.1% | 34.7% | 53.7% |
| How satisfied are you with the workplace culture in this organization? | 0.8% | 2.5% | 6.7% | 29.2% | 60.8% |
| How satisfied are you with training, professional development and advancement in this organization? | 0.8% | 3.3% | 13.3% | 41.7% | 40.8% |
| How satisfied are you with compensation, benefits and employee recognition at this organization? | 0.8% | 0.8% | 11.7% | 50.8% | 35.8% |
| I plan to continue my career with this organization. | 0.0% | 0.8% | 5.0% | 28.3% | 65.8% |
| I would recommend employment here to a friend. | 0.0% | 1.7% | 3.3% | 25.0% | 70.0% |
