Corey Zeigler, CIO, Fort Drum Regional Health Planning Organization, Chapter 3

If you think your organization has a hard time gaining access to data, trying working with the military. For organizations like Fort Drum, it has long been a struggle to provide clinicians with updated health records of military members because of the firewalls that exist. But finally, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, says Corey Zeigler, whose organization is participating in a pilot that could finally break down those walls. In this interview, he discusses the unique operating model that he believes will position Fort Drum well for the future; the governance challenges that come when hospitals aren’t owned; and how his team is leveraging an HIE to pull together data from multiple EHRs. Zeigler also talks about the organization’s population health journey, his military background, and what it’s like to get outside the four walls of the hospital.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3



* Providing “actionable data”

* Working with different EHRs — “We have some deep insight on what works.”

* Previous CIO stint at Canton-Potsdam Hospital

* From “little to absolutely no control”

* A more community-based role

* Building trust with CIOs — “What can we do to help?”

* Fort Drum’s forward-thinking model



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Bold Statements

Data quality, consistency and completeness is definitely the linchpin of the whole operation. If you don’t get that right, you’re pretty much sunk.

Until you really roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty with this data and understand it, it’s really hard. And I don’t think that it’s fair to think that through machine learning or other completely automated processes, that if we don’t get eyes on the data, that you can really tell a clinician or a decision-maker that the data is good.

I thought I had little control working in the hospital, and then I came here and I have absolutely no control. It’s definitely much more varied and maybe a little more chaotic in that none of these folks work for us, are owned by us, or are in a defined system with contracts. So it’s really about continuing to communicate that value statement.

If you have that trust there, you can take some chances and you can move forward at a much better rate than if you don’t have that relationship.

As folks move to value-based purchasing, the influence on whether or not you succeed or fail isn’t inside the four walls of the hospital; it’s out in the community. That’s where the patients live, and that’s where they’re receiving the majority of their care.

Gamble:  There’s so much that has to go into that and so many areas to consider. It’s pretty amazing.

Zeigler:  Yeah. Data quality, consistency and completeness is definitely the linchpin of the whole operation. If you don’t get that right, you’re pretty much sunk.

Gamble:  In some ways, I would think that being this type of model does have its challenges when you’re talking about all these different data sources. You have to have data quality, you have to have completeness, and I would think it takes a really good system in place that you have to kind of perfect over the years.

Zeigler:  Absolutely. The hard part about being rather small is that we’re really depending on some key resources here. We’ve got some incredibly intelligent and talented folks that have been learning this from the very beginning, and really have deep insight to what works and what doesn’t work. The new solution has a built-in data governance to...