John Showalter, MD, CHIO, University of Mississippi Medical Center, Chapter 1

There’s a lot of excitement around predictive analytics, and for good reason. Organizations like University of Mississippi MC are seeing positive results in areas like reducing pressure ulcers. But, as with any advance in technology, there are hurdles that must be overcome, most notably resistance from clinicians about how workflow will be affected. In this interview, John Showalter, MD, talks about his team’s approach to change management and how they’re working to quell clinician fears. He also discusses the pros and cons of going big-bang, what he believes will be the next wave of predictive analytics, what it was like to go from the “well-defined” CMIO role to the more nebulous CHIO role, and his advice on how to communicate more effectively with physician leaders.

Chapter 1



* UMMC’s 6-hospital system

* Defining the CHIO role

* Pros and cons of going big bang — “It’s a lot of focus on alignment & getting clinicians on board.”

* Leveraging predictive analytics to reduce pressure ulcers

* Integrating analytics into workflow

* Clinician concerns — “There’s some skepticism”

* Best practices: “Start with an agreed-upon need.”



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Bold Statements

It’s a lot of focus on alignment and getting the clinicians all on board that this is going to be good for the patients at the end of the day, and rallying around the transformation that you’re trying to make.

We really felt that they needed to get pulled back into the clinical workflow, so we worked with Epic and Jvion to integrate the two systems so that we would be able to actually put the risk into clinicians workflows and adjust care based upon what the analytics were telling us.

There’s great concern from the clinicians. There’s concern about whether or not they are going to need to do extra work to gather additional information for the analytics. There is concern about the validity of the predictions. There’s some skepticism towards how accurate they are, and then there’s always the fear of change.

We clearly communicated that it was an addition; that we weren’t asking them to replace anything else. We were just giving them another tool in their arsenal to combat this problem. So coalescing the team around what’s best for the patient and what’s in the greatest interest of care is the first step.

Gamble:  Hi John, let’s get things started with an overview of University of Mississippi Medical Center — what you have in terms of hospitals, physician practices, the schools, things like that.

Showalter:  UMMC is an academic medical center. We have six hospitals with just over 900 licensed beds, 100 clinic locations and five schools on campus: a school of pharmacy, school of nursing, a medical school and a school of health related professions, and a school of dentistry.

Gamble:  And you’re located at the University of Mississippi. Are you affiliated with the university?

Showalter:  Yes, the main campus is in Oxford, Mississippi and the medical center campus is in Jackson.

Gamble:  And you are the Chief Health Information Officer there, and how long have you had that role?

Showalter:  I’ve been the Chief Health Information Officer for a little over three years now.

Gamble:  And in total, how long have you been with the organization?

Showalter:  Almost five and a half years.

Gamble:  Can you give of a brief overview of what the CHIO role entails and what are your main focuses in that role?

Showalter:  The Chief Health Information Officer role is really about getting a return on investment from the data assets that are created across the healthcare system. So whether it’s your EHR, your accounting system, or your HR system, it’s about bringing in that data together to drive chan...