Denni McColm, CIO, Citizens Memorial Healthcare, Chapter 2

Sometimes, a quick glace is all you need. And then other times, it only gives part of the story. That’s precisely the case with Citizens Memorial, which appears to be an 86-bed rural facility, but in reality is an integrated health network that includes 650 long-term beds and a growing base of clinics. It was also the first rural health system to achieve HIMSS Stage 7, and one of the first small systems to achieve MU Stage 2. So when Denni McColm says her organization has been “ahead of the curve in many areas,” she’s actually being modest. In this interview, she talks about what it takes to foster innovation (particularly on a small budget), the organization’s journey with Meditech (and why they aren’t rushing to implement 6.1), what it’s meant to have the same CEO throughout her long tenure, and why Citizens feels like home.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2



* Medical homes for chronic disease patients

* Data extraction with DVRS

* “At-the-elbow” behavioral health support

* HealthVault’s “untethered PHR”

* Key to remaining independent? “Continued growth.”

* Hosting Meditech for small hospitals

* Innovation on a small budget — “We’ve had to stretch our dollars.”



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

Bold Statements

We have found with MU that we sort of goad people in to signing up because we need them to sign up for our numbers, and so not as many of them are active users. Whereas almost everyone was an active user in 2009, now about a third of the people that sign up actually use it.

One thing I hope we can do in utilizing the portal is to normalize all that data so that the provider can actually use it as they’re caring for the patient in an efficient way, and not have five different places they have to go.

Staying on that vision has been big. For us, because we expanded out and we’re sort of diversified by having all these lines of service, that served us well over the years. If they cut one area, usually we have some other areas where we can make up for that.

We obviously don’t have those kind of resources. It’s almost the opposite — it’s because we’ve had to stretch our dollars that we’ve been able to innovate and make things work that maybe others wouldn’t think to make work.

McColm:  One of the things our CEO is extremely visionary about is having a good partnership with the physicians. So really, people in the community don’t know whether they’re employed or independent — we all work together so well and have over the years that people can’t tell the difference.

Gamble:  That’s definitely what you want. Now, with such a reach out into the community, what are you looking at with population health? Is that something you’re doing right now or are you looking at in the next couple of years?

McColm:  Well, we are not large enough to be an ACO by ourselves. We’ve looked at a couple of models where we would join with others to be an ACO and really haven’t had any good reason to do that. What we have done is establish a medical home program. We’ve got all of our rural health clinics, which is I think 13 clinics, certified as medical homes and we’ve started working with the chronic care populations, the diabetic populations, congestive heart failure, heart disease — all kinds of cardiovascular disease patients. We have software that does extraction from our Meditech system to do quality measures and care management. It’s called DRVS, and it’s been very helpful for us in creating a registry of those various patients. We have health maintenance already built into our EMR as well, so it’s right in front of the provider if the patient needs their preventative or their diabetic care....