Best Hospital IT 2016: #3 Medium Hospital
Carroll Hospital, Maryland
IT Staff: 31
Licensed Beds: 193
Overall Score: 64.24%

Carroll Hospital, a 193-bed hospital in Westminster, Maryland takes pride in pushing the envelope.

Long before population health became a leading theme for HIMSS, the hospital was deeply involved. Nearly two decades ago, working with the Carroll County Health Department, it launched Partnership for a Healthier Carroll County, Inc. to promote healthy lifestyles and monitor data to “check the pulse” of Carroll's population health.

Today, the hospital is providing enterprise care management using an internally developed tool, says Tressa Springmann, vice president and chief information officer for LifeBridge Health of Baltimore, MD, which acquired Carroll Hospital last April. “That’s pretty progressive for a small community hospital,” Springmann says. “Unlike other community hospitals, which are dipping their toes in population health, we’re population health on steroids,” she says.

Springmann, who inherited leadership of Carroll’s IT department through the merger, says for a community-based hospital the Carrol team does “phenomenal things,” when they aren’t distracted by a merger. “It’s a highly skilled team,” she said. 

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Carroll has seen a much deeper and broader IT adoption over the past five years, according to Springmann. The hospital has “hit home runs,” when it comes to achieving meaningful use requirements and involvement in the Carroll accountable care organization (ACO). The support the IT department provides is “progressive” and fully supports the continuum of healthcare under the ACO, Springmann says.

Through the merger with Lifebridge, Carroll Hospital’s IT team will benefit from a system integration that should break down information barriers and lead to improved patient care.

This can only be good news for Carroll, which has an extensive history of winning quality care awards, even prior to the merger. Some of Carroll’s other awards include: the Delmarva Foundation Excellence Award for Quality Improvement in 2013 and 2014; the GWTG Platinum Performance Achievement Award by the American College of Cardiology's NCDR ACTION Registry in 2015, 2014 and 2013; and the American Heart Association's 2014 Mission: Lifeline Bronze Receiving Center Recognition for care of STEMI (heart attack) patients.

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.

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