Anne Lara, CIO, Union Hospital of Cecil County, Chapter 1

Call it history repeating itself. In the fall of 2013, Anne Lara and her team were knee-deep in plans to become one of just two organizations (at the same) to migrate to Meditech 6.1. A year and a half later, Union Hospital of Cecil County is at it again, paving the way by going live with Meditech’s scribe functionality. In this interview, Lara talks about what it takes to be an early adopter, the biggest hurdles with attesting to stage 2, how her team is partnering with DataMotion to enable direct messaging, and the complexity of HIE when you closely border two states. She also discusses the culture change needed to increase patient engagement, her key concerns as CIO, and why she feels “very positive” about where the industry is headed.

Chapter 1



* About Union Hospital

* Early adopter of Meditech 6.1 & scribe functionality

* “The organization has embraced the concept.”

* Partnership with Meditech — “We have a very clear escalation path.”

* MU 2 challenges

* Direct messaging with DataMotion

* Maryland & Delaware HIEs



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Bold Statements

It wasn’t just an IT project; it was an organizational commitment to making the go-live a successful event.

We continue to look at the opportunities to use our EMR to help improve our patient outcomes as well as improve our clinical workflow.

We have weekly calls with them. We identify issues. We have a very clear escalation path if things need to be escalated. So we work really closely with Meditech, both from the clinical workflow perspective but also on the revenue cycle end.

The transmission of CCD is there. We want to now take that information and consume it right into the Meditech record so that the information is readily available to the provider.

The information is there; it’s just a matter of knowing where to find it.

Gamble:  Hi Anne, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today.

Lara:  No problem. Happy to speak with you, Kate. Thank you.

Gamble:  We’ve spoken before, but if you could just give a little bit of background about Union Hospital Cecil County, what you have in terms of bed size, ambulatory care, things like that.

Lara:  Sure. Union Hospital Cecil County is the healthcare system for all of Cecil County, Maryland. We’re licensed for 122 beds. We have a medical staff of close to 400 providers. We’re all about servicing the community and we’re a very mission-driven organization in terms that we feel responsible for maintaining the health of the population of Cecil County. We have a number of owned physician practices providing primary care, a number of the specialties like pulmonology, rheumatology, OB GYN, GI, GU, etc. So we’re a pretty broad-based community-based hospital.

Gamble:  Okay. And you are in what I guess is considered the northern part of the state?

Lara:  We’re close to Delaware and we’re actually close to Pennsylvania, so it puts us in a unique position. From a population perspective, we have a number of customers that we serve that are in what I guess is called the western part of Delaware and right across the border in Pennsylvania. But I would say we’re in the northern or northeastern part of the state of Maryland.

Gamble:  When you and I last spoke, you were preparing for the go-live of Meditech 6.1 and you were a very early adopter. So I wanted to start by seeing how everything went with that.

Lara:  That’s a wonderful question, and interestingly enough, yesterday was the anniversary of our go-live. We’ve been live with Meditech’s 6.1 since February of 2014. The go-live event went very, very well. The organization embraced this particular adventure, and that was the key to success. I think I’ve said this before,