Denni McColm, CIO, Citizens Memorial Healthcare, Chapter 3

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

Chapter 3



* Make It Better — asking “all the right questions”

* Most Wired Innovator

* “We’ve build able to build on that early innovation.”

* At CMH since 1988

* Director roles in HR and finance

* Choosing Meditech — “We started with a clean slate.”

* Learning while leading

* A CEO’s vision



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Bold Statements

It’s something completely new where we say, ‘Okay, stop just a second. What are the alternatives to this? What are the risks of moving forward this way, and what are the risks of not moving forward this way?’ And so it’s a little bit more of a formal process just to make sure all the right questions are answered.

We added patient status like ‘ready for discharge’ or ‘pending admission’ or ‘assigned to a doctor’ — things that we take for granted because we can see them ourselves in the system, but for patients, it’s very confusing under a very stressful situation.

To move into the role and not be technical — because I rely on people with technical skills and expertise now — it was a big change. It did help knowing the organization from the human resources side and the finance side.

Instead of being in silos where lab has their own system and they can have whatever they want in there, everything has to flow. It used to be that lab built all the new lab tests; now if there’s a new lab test, it doesn’t just affect the lab, it affects long-term care, it affects the physician practices, it affects the hospital.

I would hear people say, ‘We need this hospital, but it’ll just be a glorified nursing home,’ and he really had another vision. I don’t think the community had the vision; I think he had that vision and he brought it.

Gamble:  Is there a system in place or is it kind of an unspoken thing where if you have an idea or some thoughts on how to make this work better or get this type of functionality, you just come forward and we’ll talk about?

McColm:  We have developed, over the years, a little bit more process around it. It’s based a lot around having a collaborative atmosphere and having a fairly flat organizational structure so that if you have an idea, you get the right group together, and we work together to get everybody involved. We do have a process though now we call MIB, or Make It Better. It’s something completely new we have where we say, ‘Okay, stop just a second. What are the alternatives to this? What are the risks of moving forward this way, and what are the risks of not moving forward this way?’ And so it’s a little bit more of a formal process just to make sure all the right questions are answered.

But mostly, I think it comes back to people being willing to work together to solve problems. Like the electronic whiteboard — that’s one of the things w...