Craig Richardville, SVP & CIO, Carolinas HealthCare System, Chapter 1

What’s the key to retaining top talent in an industry where it is at a premium? Challenge them, says Craig Richardville, who believes the brightest stars should have the loftiest goals. And there’s perhaps none loftier than his organization’s mission to usher the industry into the era of transformative, patient-centered care. In this interview, Richardville talks about why interoperability is “always a work in progress,” why he has no plans to move to a single-vendor platform, and how his team is applying the same principles used in the financial and retail worlds to revolutionize patient engagement. He also discusses what the CIO of the Year award meant to his team, his vision of healthcare in the future, and the question leaders should ask before embarking on any initiative.

Chapter 1



* About CHS

* Multiple-vendor platform with Epic, Cerner & McKesson

* “The future is interoperability and being able to share data.”

* EDW, HIE & patient engagement

* Using patient-generated data to create a “unified, holistic view”

* Learning from Mint.com — “We’re going to you.”



LISTEN NOW USING THE PLAYER BELOW OR CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE TO OUR iTUNES PODCAST FEED

Bold Statements

Unless there is a strong financial or clinical reason to unify, the future of healthcare really is collaboration by developing clinically integrative networks and being able to truly let the patient determine a lot of their course of action.

The information that we’re building in our warehouse is truly not necessarily for our patient, because that would be only for those that are seeking care; instead, it is more person-centered.

What we’re looking at as part of our vision is that as a patient, I’ll be able to see all my health information together even though it may have been consumed or created at multiple healthcare institutions.

Just as with all of your financial transactions, many of which can be made with your phone today versus physically entering them — we’re doing the same thing with healthcare in putting all this information on a mobile platform so that we are actually coming to you.

Richardville:  We’re a multiple hospital healthcare system based out of Charlotte, North Carolina. We have about 40 hospitals that are part of the CHS family and several thousand employee providers as part of it, a little over 1,100 physical locations, and we do about nearly 12 million encounters a year.

Gamble:  Are you primarily in North Carolina?

Richardville:  We’re in North Carolina, South Carolina, and slowly starting to move into the contingent states around the Carolinas.

Gamble:  And you’ve been with the organization since 1997?

Richardville:  Yes, I’ve been here for 19 years. A long time.

Gamble:  How long have you been in the CIO role?

Richardville:  For nine years.

Gamble:  Okay. And the organization just got a new CEO?

Richardville:  Yes, we hired a new CEO. His name is Gene Woods, and he plans on coming in toward the end of the second quarter, in terms of moving forward.

Gamble:  And have you had a chance to speak with him?

Richardville:  We’ve had some very light conversations. He seems to be an extremely bright, intelligent, competitive person, focused on building relationships, and very collaborative. I think it’s going to be a very nice transition as we look to what the future of healthcare is.

Gamble:  So in terms of the EHR environment, starting on the hospital side, are you on one provider at this point? How is that structured?

Richardville:  Within our total enterprise, we have Cerner in some of our system, I have Epic in other parts of our system, I have McKesson, and I have one facility that actually has CPSI. Primarily we have Cerner, Epic and McKesson.

Gamble:  So the big question is,