Newsworthy

Dear Community Partners,

Here are today’s updates:

• Chief Medical Information Officer: Dr. Karen Bruce
• Happy Retirement Larry Lane and Shirley Simms
• Current Status at Stormont Vail Health

Chief Medical Information Officer: Dr. Karen Bruce

While most Stormont Vail Health physicians are helping patients through diagnosis and treatment, Dr. Karen Bruce, as our Chief Medical Information Officer, impacts all patients across the system – as well as all of our providers and other team members utilizing Epic, our electronic medical record.

“It has been fast paced and head spinning to learn Epic on a deeper level and to get to know our Epic team, their skills, and all of the projects they work on to make provider and staff more effective in their roles and improve their ability to help guide our patients’ care,” Dr. Bruce says. “I look forward to continuing to support the Epic team in their endeavors and to support providers and staff in accessing tools and functionality that will improve their work and patient care.”

Now a year into the CMIO role, Dr. Bruce continues to see patients about eight hours a week as a family practice provider.

“This does help me stay in touch with what providers face on a daily basis including seeing patients, answering nursing and patient messages, dealing with results and other In Basket tasks,” she says. “It also helps me stay in the thick of things with my colleagues at Corporate View who freely share their thoughts and ideas.”

Dr. Bruce’s medical career journey began with a background in engineering, including computer programing and computer modeling experience.  As an engineer, she planned to go into biomedical research, which led her to medical school. There her plan derailed because she thoroughly enjoyed direct patient care and “specifically primary care with its breadth and variety.” She became a family medicine physician in 1990.

Dr. Bruce has always been interested in electronic health records. As a physician, she had her first experience with an electronic medical record, i.e. a fancy word processor, in 1992.  She also taught a course on the use of electronic information in medicine in medical school and residency programs.  She was a contributing author in a book regarding electronic information and computer use in medical education in the early 1990s. She continued learning about electronic medical records in her own private practice and when she joined Stormont Vail in 2017 was introduced to Epic.

Among projects Dr. Bruce is now working on are:

• In Basket Project: reduce “noise” for ambulatory providers from duplicate and unnecessary messages, notes and results.  Go-live of this project will be in August 2022.
• Computer Provider Order Entry Project:  improve the provider order processes and facilitate policies and procedures for staff to place routine orders.  Standardization and provider order entry will help improve efficiency and patient safety.  The timeline for this project is early 2023.
• Provider to Provider Communication Project: improve direct provider to provider communication for consults, report/result messaging and follow-up; improve timeliness of patient care in Inpatient setting; remove nursing and other staff from provider to provider communication workflow. This is anticipated in summer or fall 2022.

“Being able to step into the CMIO role now with decades of clinical experience and an understanding of the power of electronic information and data is very exciting,” she says. Thank you, Dr. Bruce, for all of your amazing efforts for our patients and our team.

Happy Retirement: Larry Lane and Shirley Simms

Congratulations to two long-time Stormont Vail Health team members on their upcoming retirements.

Larry Lane has provided 34 plus years of outstanding and dedicated service to our organization, most recently as Director of Security. His retirement is effective May 28. Larry has been instrumental in growing, enhancing and professionalizing the Security Department and providing the organization with an exceptionally safe and secure workplace. We appreciate all that Larry has done for Stormont Vail and our team and wish him all the best in his new chapter of adventures.

Shirley Simms, a part of the Stormont Vail Health family for more than 35 years, will be retiring June 2. Most recently, Shirley has worked in the department of Regional Relations and as the Office Manager for Kanza Office Park Building #2. Shirley is the very definition of a servant team member.  If you needed office supplies, Shirley was there. If you needed help scheduling a conference room, Shirley was there. If you needed a warm smile to brighten your day, Shirley was there. She has looked after everyone and kept things running smoothly for all departments at KOP#2. Thank you for your many years of service, Shirley!  We wish you the best of luck and a happy, healthy retirement!

Current Status at Stormont Vail Health

• 2 inpatients are COVID-19 positive.
• 65% of recent COVID-19 admissions are unvaccinated or had last dose/booster more than 6 months ago.
• COVID-19 inpatient discharges (previous week): 13. Deaths: 1.
• 11 COVID-19 positive patients in the outpatient Enhanced Primary Care program.
• 12.0% of people tested for COVID-19 at Stormont Vail facilities the past seven days were positive.
• 14 team members and 2 providers on contact leave for COVID-19.
• 104,404 vaccinations (included boosters) administered.
• To schedule a COVID-19 vaccine appointment:
  • Use online scheduling assistant at stormontvail.org/covid19/vaccine
  • Call (785) 270-4786.

We together,
Dr. Kenagy