Bill Bishop, CIO, Colquitt Regional Medical Center, Chapter 1

It takes a certain personality type to be able to walk into an organization and start making changes right away. When Bill Bishop took on the role of CIO at Colquitt Regional Medical Center, he knew that there were “antiquated processes” that needed to be revamped — and that there was going to be some resistance, but he didn’t let that stop him. And although he lost a few people with his “double-edge approach” of pushing for improvements while also being transparent, the core group remained largely in place, and is now working toward becoming an integrated system.

In this interview, Bishop talks about the strategy his team used to implement Meditech 6.1 in the hospital — and how they’ll tweak it to roll it out in the clinics; why he believes engagement from both physicians and nurses is paramount to a project’s success; and how his past life in product development provided him with insights into the vendor world.

Chapter 1



* About Colquitt Regional

* 100 percent rural, 100 percent independent

* Going from Meditech Magic to 6.1

* Physician engagement – “It’s never been a problem.”

* Applying lessons learned: “We’ve fine-tuned nursing documentation to the best of our ability.”

* Integration as a recruiting tool

* Staying independent – “It’s hard.”



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Bold Statements

You don’t really have to do a lot to get them engaged. They’re really interested in using the technology to the best of their abilities. And with the Web ambulatory product, pretty much every physician was on board because of the integration between the inpatient side and the physician practices, which is something we truly lack.

The people that run that committee really embrace the technology and try to use it. They understand that we have to use the technology; it’s not going away.

Sometimes when you ask people why they use it, they didn’t know. They just used it. And so after go-live, we really tried to drill in on whether the data was being used. If not, we got rid of it.

The physicians are very excited to be able to see when their patients have been to the hospital or vice versa, what clinics they’ve been to, what medicines they’ve gotten. It’s a really neat concept.

Gamble:  I think the best place to start is by getting some information about Colquitt Regional — what you have in terms of bed size and some of the other ambulatory offerings that are part of the organization.

Bishop:  We’re a 99-bed facility, all private rooms. We have roughly 70 physicians, 20 specialties. We’ve done a lot of expansions at our hospital over the past couple of years. We’ve added a new emergency department, a new intensive care unit, new surgery department, and created a new centralized main entrance. We’ve also started a radiology department expansion, and we are opening up a new oncology department in February. We recently added Georgia South, a family medicine residency program here for both MDs and DOs. We also are anticipating a medical school in Moultrie to become loosely affiliated with us some time in 2018-2019. We’re Joint Commission-accredited. One of the things we like to brag about is we’ve received a Leapfrog Hospital Safety score of ‘A’ for seven consecutive times, and we’re also Joint Commission-certified for total hip and knee replacement. We’re the only hospital in our region to have that affiliation.

Gamble:  It sounds like you have a lot going on. And you’re located in Georgia?

Bishop:  We’re in South Georgia. We’re about an hour from Tallahassee, about 45 minutes from Valdosta, and roughly 45 minutes from Albany.

Gamble:  So it’s fairly a rural population?

Bishop:  We’re a 100 percent rural hospital.