At Children's Hospital, IT pros make 'rounds' and solve problems
Every single IT professional at Children’s Hospital & Medical Center makes rounds in a clinical or operational area. That’s right: Rounds, much like the type clinicians typically conduct.
The IT staff, however, is not treating patients, they’re interfacing with doctors and nurses and with other hospital staff to check-in with the people they serve and spot any potential problems, then figure out how to fix them.
A shining example? “There was a process in cardiology where [clinicians] had to enter patient information twice and it was a lingering, frustrating kind of thing but nobody called us about it,” says CIO George Reynolds, MD. “Literally, it took us a couple of hours to fix it and now it saves probably 20 people 20 minutes a day every day of the week.”
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Sounds simple enough but when IT can correct something a lot of people are doing, it adds up to results that really matter – and Reynolds said he has “dozens and dozens” of examples in an email folder bursting with compliments about how the IT staff “rocks” for coming in, seeing a problem, amending it quickly.
“That level of commitment to the organization is just fun to be around,” Reynolds says. And that attitude marks bigger projects as well. Reynolds and his team are celebrating the one-year anniversary of their Epic enterprise go-live with a week of fun-filled events to thank employees.
One day there will be ice cream. On another, a taco truck will roll into the back lot, and Reynolds adds that the hospital intends to buy everyone fleeces branded with logos for autumn.
“We had people working 60 and 70 hours for several weeks at a time,” Reynolds says of the go live. “They did it because they knew it was important and the mission drives a lot of what we do. Still, that’s just plain hard on everybody.”
Reynolds explains that he is most proud of the IT department for how it pulls together to support the organization’s mission of treating children, a reality that is likely to come in handy as he and his team take on a raft of new projects in the near future, including equipping new facilities, adding physicians that are bringing in lines of service Children’s has not offered before – all while gunning to achieve HIMSS Analytics Stage 7 by year’s end.
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