Best Hospital IT 2016: #4 Large Hospital

Inspira Health Network, New Jersey
IT Staff: 65
Overall Score: 64.15%

Inspira Health Network CIO Tom Pacek spoke sanguinely: “This is an exciting time for IT.” 

Exciting, that is, for caregivers, clinicians, patients — as well as the IT pros who not only support them but also build new tools to improve their work delivering care. 

Coming in at number 3 on our list of Best Hospital IT Departments in the category of Large, Inspira is amid a switch to an enterprise IT solution, Cerner Millenium, and while that means whittling away 18 other software systems, the hospital is also filling in its quiver of innovative patient-facing apps.

“We’re doing everything we can to create a great patient experience,” Pacek said. “If we can create a patient experience that is exceptional, that’s the component that keeps people coming back.”

To that end, Inspira’s IT shop developed an app to improve patient registration by eliminating paperwork and enabling patients to look up wait times, put oneself in line for an appointment, and transfer their data between different Inspira facilities.

The next big cutting-edge IT project Inspira is already working on, Pacek said, is to capture data from wearables. The health system is developing a fitness app that patients will be able to use at one of Inspira’s two fitness centers. Personal trainers can interact with clients, prescribe a workout regimen, then capture data directly from cardio machines. Users can also input exercise directly into the app.

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Pacek said that Inspira is also beginning to work on a project that would prescribe medical devices, such as a glucometer, to patients. Right now, Pacek and his team are working though process of identifying which conditions and diseases to target and learning what devices are available.

And that enterprise-wide Cerner implementation?

The 18-month rollout is already underway and, in fact, Pacek said that by taking IT professionals off of work supporting Soarian, which Inspira outsourced to Cerner, the project is invigorating the staff.

“They’re particularly excited about the Cerner project because we’ve pulled them off supporting Soarian,” Pacek explained. “So our staff is totally involved. They’re excited to walk away from what they were doing and get involved with this because this is the future.” 

See the below chart for more on how Inspira IT employees voted in our Best Hospital IT Departments 2016 survey: 

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