Patrick Yount, CIO, Lincoln Community Hospital and Care Center, Chapter 2

In today’s complex healthcare environment, pushing any initiative forward isn’t merely complex. In fact, it’s like “hitting a moving target with a bow and arrow from 1,000 yards away — while blindfolded,” says Patrick Yount. But no matter how big (or small) the task, the key is to ask the right questions and talk to the right people. And for the past year and a half, that’s precisely what he’s been doing as CIO at Lincoln Community Hospital, where his goals are to move to a single EHR platform, improve the patient experience, and shore up the revenue cycle process.

In this interview, Yount talks about how his plans to tackle these lofty goals, all while dealing with the challenges that come with being a rural health facility. He’ll discuss his strategy in selecting a vendor, the “fantastic opportunity” Lincoln has to become a leader in behavioral health, the approach he took as the organization’s first CIO, and why, despite its faults, he’s still a champion of Meaningful Use.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2



* “Redefining positions” to avoid staff cuts

* Identifying “data bottlenecks” in the claims process

* Revenue cycle — “It starts the moment someone walks in the door.”

* Two sides of patient experience

* Portal functionality as a key factor in EHR selection

* Behavioral health teleservices — “It’s very exciting”

* Setting up stations to make the dialogue “a little easier”



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Bold Statements

The goal is to retain as many staff members as possible. If we can avoid hiring additional staff, that would be a bonus for sure, but it doesn’t necessarily factor in the decision as to which vendor to choose. It shouldn’t.

Now that we’ve got a lot of our data consolidated into one area, it’s trying to identify those bottlenecks that would otherwise keep us from being able to move forward. We had to learn what we didn’t know, and now that we know what we’re looking for, it’s trying to decide what to do with those pieces of data.

One of our big factors in deciding on an electronic health record is how well does the patient portal work? How functional is it for your patients? What type of return can they get by using the portal?

There’s a stigma that’s associated with mental health issues. And so, the fact that they can click on a button on their phone or pull up their laptop and actually have a face-to-face visit with a provider that nobody is aware of, that has to help make the dialogue a little bit easier.

Gamble:  I guess as you get further along in the implementation phase, that’s when decisions will have to be made as to whether you need to bring in additional people, and how exactly that’s going to happen.

Yount:  Yes. I think given our workflows, given our volumes, and given what the vendors that we’re interacting with now are telling us, we should be able to get through the implementation without additional staff. One of the things I’m always leery of when working with EHR vendors is when they promise you, ‘if you implement our system, you’re actually going to be able to cut staff, because we’ll be able to do a lot of this work for you, or our system will eliminate some of these workflows.’ I have yet to see that actually come to fruition.

And honestly, it doesn’t even factor into the decision. We are the largest employer in our respective community, and cutting staff is not part of the business model. We want to redefine those positions and make us more efficient, more patient-facing, and more service-oriented, versus back in workflow and data entry.