Robin Sarkar, CIO, Lakeland Regional Health System, Chapter 1

When it comes to retaining top talent, many organizations are missing the point, says Robin Sarkar, who believes the key is to focus less on annual performance reviews and more on meaningful dialogue. What that means, says Lakeland Regional’s CIO, is asking questions that focus on where employees want to go and how leadership can help them get there. In this interview, he talks about how this strategy has helped strengthen his team, as well as the work they’re doing to bring data closer to the point of care and push population health forward. Sarkar also talks about why innovation can’t happen without failures, and what it was like coming to healthcare from the business world.

Chapter 1



* About Lakeland Regional

* Achieved HIMSS Stage 7 in 2013, recertified in 2016

* Being an “aggressive user” of Epic capabilities

* Focus on translating data into insights

* Using monitors to make information visible — “It’s helping us save lives.”

* “Two in a box”: integrating IT & clinical minds

* Extending pilots to ambulatory



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Bold Statements

Our focus right now is on trying to move our EHR capabilities to the next level, which is to try and see how we can move more and more data to the point of care and make it visible and measurable.

A lot of information in healthcare, even for those who support our patients, is hidden in the system, locked up somewhere. You log in. You drill down a couple of times, you hunt and gather, and you figure it out.

Our physicians and nursing teams are starting to huddle around these boards. It’s a very visible, visual, and simple way of bringing our EHR and our vital signs information right in front of the providers in an interesting way.

Like two in a box, they work together. The clinical partner says, ‘What’s the information that would really help the clinical teams drive patient safety and better patient outcomes?’ Then the IT teams work to try to provide that system in the best visual way possible.

Gamble:  Hi Robin, thank you so much for taking some time to speak with us today.

Sarkar:  Thank you, Kate. It’s a pleasure.

Gamble:  I think the best way to start would be to get some basic information about Lakeland Health — what you have in terms of number of beds, ambulatory clinics, and where you’re located.

Sarkar:  Lakeland Health is located in Southwest Michigan. We are a three-hospital system with 400 beds and approximately 4,500 employees. Even though we are a smaller health system, we do have a lot of importance placed on technology and leveraging technology in order to make it best use for our patients and providers.

Gamble:  And you’re an Epic user in the hospitals?

Sarkar:  Yes. Our core EHR is Epic and we’ve been on Epic since 2012. We were also rapidly moved to HIMSS Stage 7 in 2013, and at the end of 2016, we were recertified at HIMSS Stage 7 for another three years.

Gamble:  What does the process of getting recertified entail?

Sarkar:  That’s a great question. HIMSS Stage 7, to keep it simple, is leveraging health IT to a high extent for the benefit of our patients and providers. I would say it’s representative, to a certain extent, of a paperless health system, leveraging technology as much as possible. When you first get certified, there are evaluators who come onsite and make sure that you’re meeting all the standards, which we met in 2013.

In the last three years, they’ve upgraded their standards. HIMSS continuously looks at and evaluates this, and they upgraded their standards in 2016 in a number of areas; blood administration is one example. Again, they come on site and do a rigorous site visit and have various documentation which we provide to make sure t...