Ed Grogan, VP & CIO, Calvert Health System, Chapter 1

In the current health system landscape, where organizations just keep growing, Calvert Health System is considered to be quite small. But it’s a “mouse that roars,” according to CIO Ed Grogan, who has spent the past 12 years leading Calvert’s transformation from a small hospital to a dynamic health system. In this interview, he talks about the Maryland eCare initiative and partnerships that have expanded Calvert’s reach and helped improve care for patients across the state. He also discusses the organization’s comprehensive EHR-selection process—and why they ultimately chose Meditech; their work with CRISP, including plans to implement a “Magic button” for physicians; the importance of team chemistry; and his “passion for technology integration.”

Chapter 1



* About Calvert

* Allscripts ED, NextGen in ambulatory

* 9-month EHR selection process: deep dives of “the big 3”

* Meditech’s population health roadmap

* Using consultants

* 17 focus groups — “We wanted to engage all the major stakeholders in the organization.”

* Physician advisory council



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Bold Statements

Population health management is very important for us — not only because it’s the right thing to do to help maintain the wellness of our community but also, it’s a requirement for our financial survival.

We wanted to make sure Meditech had a good roadmap for the future, and that’s what we concluded at the end of the selection process.

We had physicians and nurses talk about their experience with Cerner, with Epic, and with the newer Meditech platforms. So that was also very enlightening, and of course it also helped us garner stakeholder buy-in.

I don’t see the hospital making the decision or the health system making the decision necessarily. I think we certainly will engage the independent physicians as far as what our next move would be there.

Gamble:  Hi Ed, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us today.

Grogan:  Thank you, Kate. I look forward to it.

Gamble:  Great. So to give our readers and listeners some background information, can you just talk a little bit about Calvert Memorial — bed size, ambulatory offerings and where you’re located?

Grogan:  Calvert Health System is a small health system located in Calvert County, Maryland, which is south of Annapolis and just out of the suburbs of Washington, D.C. We’re about 45 miles southeast of Washington, D.C., and about 60 miles south of Baltimore. Our primary service area for the system covers 125,000 people, about 90,000 residents of our county and the fringes of surrounding counties as well. We’re about 100 bed hospital, and we have a transitional care unit as well in our facility. We also have a number of medical office buildings spread throughout the county, north, south and east, providing outpatient services for imaging and lab. We have employed physicians, and our hospital provides a service to independent physicians as a management service organization hosting physician practice management systems and electronic health records for those independent physicians as well.

So we’re the sole provider in our county. We’ve been around since the early 1900s, and have recently received quite a few quality awards for the organization. In 2014, Consumer Reports acknowledged us as receiving the top score among all hospitals in Maryland and in the Washington, D.C. area for patient safety. We also were a top performer for Joint Commission for quality and also received the top 10 percent from Healthgrades recently for quality. We received Most Wired for the first time in 2014 for the breadth of the technology we’re deploying, and we also were one of 25 hospitals nationwide to receive the award from HIMSS Media for best hospital IT ...