Currently, one of the most important goals in the health IT industry is making data truly interoperable.

In pursuit of that goal, healthcare organizations are seeking ways to match patient data and locate records in a fragmented digital environment where technology and processes simply aren’t set up to allow efficient data exchange and access. On top of that, regulatory requirements are putting additional pressure on healthcare organizations to meet benchmarks and reporting mandates.

Our thought leader podcast series continues with a very special guest: the 2017 CHIME-HIMSS John E. Gall, Jr. CIO of the Year Randy McCleese. Randy currently serves as the CIO at Methodist Hospital, a 192-bed acute care hospital, 25-bed critical access hospital, and 19-practice physician network based in Henderson, Kentucky.

The challenges faced by rural healthcare organizations today — Critical Access Hospitals in particular — are truly daunting. Many never fully recovered from the economic downturn and most continue to experience provider shortages while caring for an increasingly older and more chronically ill population.

Clinician burnout is a topic we’ve covered in detail here on the MEDITECH blog, and for good reason. Long nights of excessive documentation are taking time away from clinicians, interfering with their relationships with patients.

We’ve compiled some recommendations from clinicians and industry leaders on how to address staff burnout. 

Think of where your hospital’s IT department was six years ago. Now, consider where it is today — and how you see it evolving in the future.

In the past six years, Halifax Health has undergone a total transformation in how we approach IT, from having experienced a number of challenges, to being named the Best Place to Work in IT in midsized organizations for three straight years by Computerworld.

Whether a hospital has 6 or 600 beds, clinicians require the right tools to provide quality patient care. If only it were that simple, right?

Procuring a modern EHR can be complex and costly, pulling on an organization’s resources from all angles — not to mention having to navigate numerous third party products in order to meet all their needs. For smaller healthcare organizations, this can become an especially daunting experience.