Myra Davis, SVP & CIO, Texas Children’s Hospital, Chapter 1

If you ask Myra Davis, there’s a big component many leaders are missing when it comes to leveraging data: education. An organization can have all the coolest tools and technologies, but if clinicians don’t understand what exactly is available and how they can interpret it, the data just isn’t worth much. In this interview, the CIO of Texas Children’s Hospital talks about how her team has dealt with clinician expectations when it comes to data, and how they’re utilizing education and dashboards to help them get the most out of it. She also talks about the work her organization has done to implement an EDW and their plans going forward, how breaking down silos between IS and clinical has helped empower users, her strategy when it comes to fostering innovation, and why still thinks the industry is “a lot of fun.”

Chapter 1



* About Texas Children’s Hospital

* Epic in hospitals & clinics

* Finding the right balance with data access

* “Don’t underestimate the level you have to go through to the explain data.”

* Population health

* Future EDW plans — “The concept of data is never-ending.”



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Bold Statements

We spent a lot of time just scratching our heads on how do we help the organization get what they need, because it was becoming apparent that they were going to get it one way or the other, whether it was entering it off the screen into a spreadsheet, or asking for data that may or may not have been actually valid and not really understanding how the data was actually born in the system.

We had to actually go to that level of detail to explain in some cases and to say that you don’t want a hard stop or required field on everything that you want, because now the system is not very user-friendly. So there’s a balance, and I needed to determine exactly what that balance was.

The concept of data is just never ending. Now that we are 10 years into Epic, we have lots of data — data is an asset for us — but we still have work to do with educating the organization on what’s available to them and how they can get it and interpret it.

Now you’re getting into predictive analytics and all of that sits on the foundation of data, and understanding my data, just starting with basic reporting. How do I just get a report? And then you take it from there, so don’t underestimate the education that’s needed.

Gamble:  Hi Myra, thank you so much for taking some time to speak with us today. Can you provide a brief overview of Texas Children’s Hospital — what you have in terms of the bed size, some of the ambulatory facilities, things like that?

Davis:  Sure. We are licensed for approximately 650 beds. We have three hospitals — we focus on adult care and OBGYN as well. We have approximately 50 primary care/pediatric practices that are located throughout the Houston metropolitan area. We have in excess of 40 subspecialty care providers as well. We also have about four urgent cares, and we’re targeting almost 10 by next year.

Gamble:  Okay, that’s a pretty good view and obviously you’re located in Texas. Where exactly are you?

Davis:  We’re in Houston, in the Texas Medical Center.

Gamble:  How long have you been with the organization?

Davis:  I’ve been with Texas Children’s for 12 years.

Gamble:  And how long have you been in the CIO role?

Davis:  I have been in the CIO role for five years.

Gamble:  So I want to talk about some of the efforts that are taking place to really use data to drive quality improvement, care quality and to do that, I think we should kind of lay a little groundwork.  So can you talk first about the clinical application environment, what type of EHR system is being used?

Davis:  We’re on Epic.