Q&A with CIO Robin Lang, Part 1: “Change Management Is a Tough Business.”

Once a nurse, always a nurse.

It’s funny; Robin Lang never would’ve envisioned herself as a CIO. As a nurse, her passion was caring for patients – both those in the hospital and those living in the community. But the more she became involved in technology, the more she started to believe in the impact she could have in an informatics leadership role. In fact, Lang found that not only could she touch more patients, but she was also able to improve care delivery and help reduce the burden faced by clinicians.

Recently, healthsystemCIO spoke with Lang about her 30-year journey from nurse to CIO, and the work her team is doing at CaroMont Health to move toward an integrated system while making IT as “seamless” as possible. She also talked about how they’re working to provide at-the-elbow support, the organization’s philosophy on growing from the bench, and the enormous privilege of being a female IT leader.

Chapter 1



* About CaroMont Health

* Going live w/ Epic in the hospital first – “We did it a little differently.”

* Earning users’ trust after a “painful install”

* Partnership with Mercy Technology Services to help mitigate cost & risk

* Informaticist concierge – “Physicians appreciate the work we’ve done.”

* Expertise triad of technical, clinical & operations

* “We’re not IT-led in these initiatives.”

* At-the-elbow support from users – “They understand it at the granular level.”



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Bold Statements

Some of the practices came from paper, and it was a very vanilla approach where you get in, get live, and then optimize on the back end. History has shown us that’s just not the best way. You really have to go live with what you need, or it’s really painful.

It’s not just a slogan to be physician-led; we really need partners to be the face of the project and understand what was coming, because even with the best planning, there’s still pain. It’s still a difficult thing to rip out an EMR and replace it.

It allowed us to do a ramp-up period with employees rather than having to scale down the people we hired from our community a few years after the implementation. They helped bridge that gap.

It’s a wonderful partnership, and it’s one side pushing the other, depending on the day. Sometimes IT is nudging operations, and other days operations is doing it.

Gamble:  The first thing I’d like to do is get an overview of CaroMont Health. I know you have the hospital, as well as some other care locations.

Lang:  CaroMont Regional Medical Center is the anchor hospital to CaroMont Health. We just announced a second location in Belmont, which is going to be a partnership with Belmont Abbey College. We’re looking to open that facility in 2023. We have a free-standing ED, hospice, and long-term care on our campus. We also have 52 (and growing) practices that cover several specialties, as well as primary care and urgent care.

 

Gamble:  In terms of the EHR, what do you have in the hospital and clinics?

Lang:  In 2015, we converted to Epic on the inpatient side. We were a hodgepodge of all different, best-of-breed systems that had grown up through the 90s and the 2000s. We did it a little differently and went live with the hospital first. We had four disparate EMRs in the medical practices, and so after doing the hospital and getting our footing, we took the practices one by one and replaced them in 2016.

We’re primarily Epic everywhere, but we do still have some other systems. In our cath lab, for example, we haven’t implemented Cupid; we still use a McKesson product. We still have some other interface systems, but we’re mostly an Epic shop now.