Joel Taylor, SVP & CIO, CarePoint Health System, Chapter 2

When Joel Taylor sees people who are out of place and talking to someone in a completely different role, he doesn’t mind at all. In fact, he finds it to be inspiring, because it shows people are curious and willing to step out of their comfort zones. In this interview, the CIO at CarePoint Health System talks about what his team is doing to create growth opportunities in IT to make sure they’re able to retain top talent. He also discusses the multi-phased coordinated care initiative at his organization, the challenges in engaging with elderly patients, the power of organic mentoring how his team is working through data sharing hurdles with acquired physician practices, and how he’s working to make innovation part of the overall strategy, and not just “the next toy.”

Chapter 1

Chapter 2



* 3 steps to coordinated care

* Attesting to MU 2

* Engaging with elderly patients — “It’s a struggle.”

* Waiting on HIEs and ACOs — “There are a lot of decisions to be made before going down that path.”

* IT staff of 130

* Leadership strategy – “Hire the right people.”



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Bold Statements

We do have some strategies on front-end technologies that will provide a portal to our patients that’s product agnostic, so kind of a single portal for them to look at even though data’s coming from different sources.

They have their hands into every corner, every dark table in our databases, and are reporting information that we’re using to drive our business, from coordinated care to marketing to our revenue capture.

For an organization that’s only a couple of years old, there are some ducks that need to get in a row. It’s not the kind of thing you want to get involved in until you know you can do it really well.

If you’re micromanaging, you’re telling your team you don’t trust them. I think you have to hire the right people, you have to trust them, and you have to hold them accountable for executing their duties.

Gamble:  The whole idea of coordinated care is really important for your organization and a big initiative. Can you just talk a little bit about the work being done there as far as establishing the whole care continuum for the patient?

Taylor:  Certainly getting our EMR installed in the medical practices is the number one piece to this. From there, interfacing that with our hospital EMR so that information can be shared back and forth as patients utilize different components of our system.

And then stage three will actually be integrating with our affiliated physicians, physicians that are admitting but are not employed, and being able to set up an HIE-type of environment with them so that it’s easier for them to bring their patients to our hospitals and care for their patients through our system.

Gamble:  When you talk about the integration team, is that a department within IT or is it kind of separate?

Taylor:  It’s part of the field services team we have here. It’s the same group of people that provide the end-user support. We don’t want to have a separate group of people; we try to limit the handoffs.

Gamble:  Right. When you talk about everything you’re doing to facilitate data exchange, that’s a big part of the Meaningful Use requirements. I want to just talk about where you stand in general with Meaningful Use and how you’re positioned.

Taylor:  We’re moving forward with varying levels of Meaningful Use attestation at our hospitals. We’re doing the same with our physician practices. Many of them are stage 1/stage 2 already with existing products, and we will continue that forward with eClinicalWorks.