Gary Barnes, CIO, Medical Center Health System, Chapter 1

Sometimes it’s all in the approach. When Gary Barnes was making a case for a new EHR system — one that would help achieve the goal of integration across the system — he knew it wouldn’t be an easy sell. So he used a clever analogy, explaining that buying a new system is like building a house — “You don’t want to put your old furniture in it.” In this interview, the 30-year health IT veteran talks about the “tremendous improvement” his organization has seen since creating a combined strategic plan, how the CIO role has evolved through the years, the role CHIME has played in advancing the position, and how he feels about Meaningful Use. He also discusses his team’s plans with analytics, his thoughts on physician engagement, and why he loves teaching.

Chapter 1



* About Medical Center HS

* 2-year process to select Cerner

* Best-of-breed vs integrated solution — “It was overwhelming.”

* Economics of integration

* Selling to the board — “It’s like building a house.”

* 5-7 minute training intervals

* “We want to make sure that we’ve built something that people will use.”



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Bold Statements

We had a vision of where the health industry was going so we could lay it out and say, ‘here’s what we need today. We want an integrated solution and we want something that will be able to do population health in the future.’

I explained to our board of directors it’s kind of like building a house. When you build a house, you really don’t want to put your old furniture in it, plus you want to landscape your yard.

They were impressed that we had went through the process and really looked at what it was going to cost and what it would also take to get full adoption of a new system.

We want to make sure that we’ve built something that people will use but also how do we do adoption. So we also put quite a bit of money into our training program.

By doing that, it gives us the ability to go back to our physicians and say, ‘You got the order in there, but if you would have done it this way, you would have saved a lot more clicks,’ and it builds a better adoption model.

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

Barnes:  Absolutely.

Gamble:  Just to give our listeners and readers an idea, can just tell us a little bit about Medical Center Health System.

Barnes:  We’re a 402-bed community hospital. It’s actually an integrated delivery system. We have the main hospital, we have four urgent care centers across town, and we employ about 100 physicians anywhere from primary care to a lot of specialties with cardiology. We have a hospitalist program, anesthesia, pathology, wound care, so a lot of different specialties within that group. We’re also a part of the Texas Tech Medical School.

Gamble:  What about as far as the area where you’re located — what’s the nearest city?

Barnes:  We’re in Odessa, and 20 miles away from that is Midland. We’re in the middle of the Permian Basin. Our economy is all based around the oil industry, so it’s got its highs and lows; a little slow now, but we’re coming off of a four-year tremendous boom, so it’s been a challenge. It’s a good thing we were progressive and built the urgent cares because our ED just couldn’t handle the volumes that we’ve had out here.

Gamble:  Oh wow.

Barnes:  We’re halfway between El Paso and Dallas. We have a huge geographical area. We cover about 17 counties. We have two helicopter services that feed into our level 2 lead trauma hospital, so when the oil economy hits a boom, there’s a lot of activity going on here as the lead trauma hospital.

Gamble:  Right. Now in terms of the EHR system, I had read that you’re in the process or planning to migrate to a new...