Sallie Arnett, VP of IS, Licking Memorial Health Systems, Chapter 3

In 2011, Licking Memorial had an opportunity to go the early adopter route and attest to Meaningful Use stage 1 — which would’ve been a coup for a community hospital. But Sallie Arnett wasn’t confident the software was ready, and decided the risk to patient care wasn’t worth the reward. Four years later, Arnett feels it was “definitely the right move,” and is proud to be with an organization that is willing to wait. In this interview, she talks about the benefits of being a small organization, the three-year strategy to become a fully-integrated Meditech shop, and her team’s strategy to increase patient engagement. Arnett also discusses the myriad benefits of breaking down silos between IS and clinical, the “drive toward best practices” at LMSH, and why she’s stayed there so long.

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3



* IT’s role as facilitator

* Collaborating with clinicians — “We’re not just coming to them and handing them technology.”

* At LMHS since 2001 — “My plan was to stay 3 years.”

* “I don’t think I’ve had two days that are similar.”

* Reflecting on 15 years of change

* Getting through the “dark” times



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Bold Statements

As we’re doing CPOE and bringing things on board, we don’t just come out and say, ‘Hey, we have this great idea and we’d like to give you a clinical decision support rule.’ We sit down with them, get their feedback, find out where their challenges are.

It’s fun because it’s something different every day. I don’t think I’ve had two days that are similar, and whatever is on my day planner is never what’s going to happen. So you’ve got constant variety, constant challenge.

Where I really get the greatest pleasure in what we do is when we sit in the room with the clinical staff. You’ll see a clinical coordinator or a department director talk about all they’re doing in clinical imaging, or they’ll talk about the change in the cath lab, and you see them really light up as they talk about the great improvement they’re making in patient care.

We had a lot of late evenings and watched the sunsets more than a few times. That’s been one of those memories that you look back on and think, ‘I don’t know how we got through that,’ but once we got it up and running and it was really running well, it was really satisfying.

When you’re young in your career, sometimes you spend more time butting heads than you do building. I know was that way. And I think being here this long, I’ve had time to really build relationships and understand people’s goals.

Gamble:  It sounds like it’s already ingrained into the culture that IT is not about systems, and that’s important when you don’t have to overcome that barrier.

Arnett:  Well, I come from a health information background many, many, many years ago and switched over to IT sort of midstream, so I was very familiar with the electronic medical record and medical terminology and all of those things. There’s so much power in the electronic medical record, and as we sit down with our clinical counterparts, I really view our department’s role as being facilitators for all of the clinical people. So if we’re going to make a change and we’re going to help make improvements — and we’re sort of at the hub of a lot of that now, almost every project we have starts with a collaborative meeting of all the team members and looking at what kind of clinical goals can we set, how can we benchmark those, and how can we make improvements.