When a CIO looks at their healthcare organization, they see hundreds of opportunities to improve their processes and better leverage technology. Balancing all of those competing IT projects that can provide value to their organization and improve the workflow for clinicians and patients is what makes being a CIO so challenging.
One example of a project that often gets overlooked, yet can provide value to staff and patients, is taking a look at all the forms being used across your organization. What people often don’t realize is that forms spread like wildfire in an organization. It makes sense why. Pretty much anyone can create a form and print it off. It’s not like other technology that has to go through committees and tech experts to be implemented. The slow creep of form proliferation is a real thing in almost every healthcare organization.
This was the reality for Carl Smith, CIO at King’s Daughters Medical Center, who shared about their experience with forms at the HIMSS 2021 Annual Conference in Las Vegas. Before consolidating their forms and making them all digital, they had 2,500 paper forms in use. After digitizing and consolidating those forms, they were able to reduce them to 1,000 digital forms.
To dive into the details of this project and its impact on their organization, I sat down with Carl Smith, CIO at King’s Daughters Medical Center (KDMC), Dessiree Paoli, Sr. Manager, Solution Marketing at Interlace Health, and Maggie Peña, Vice President of Client Services at Interlace Health.
In our interview embedded below, they share why forms are frequently overlooked and Smith shares the impact this project had on his organization. He also shares the importance of having the forms integrated with his MEDITECH EHR and how the process of integration went for them. (Check out the full details of how Interlace Health & MEDITECH helped digitize KDMC’s informed consent process in this case study)
Smith also shares how forms optimization never stops which goes contrary to many people’s idea that we’ve already figured out forms and can move on. Forms are not a one and done project, and Peña highlights how the relationship between Interlace Health and KDMC is ever-evolving as part of this continuous effort to improve the experience for both patients and staff.
Finally, we wrap up the interview talking about a stat they shared in their HIMSS presentation that 52% of healthcare leaders ranked patient engagement as their biggest focus. Plus, Smith shares what’s top of mind for him and what he’s most excited about going forward.
Check out our interview with KDMC and Interlace Health below.
Learn more about Interlace Health: https://interlacehealth.com/
Learn more about King’s Daughters Medical Center: https://kdmc.org/
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