Working in healthcare informatics is still a passion, but I mostly enjoy the aspects of healthcare administration that require the ability to translate the needs of the physician community to the administrators who make the decisions that will affect the lives of the physicians and the patients they care for. To meet these challenges, I currently serve as the Vice President of Medical Affairs at Baptist Health Care in Pensacola, Florida, and as the Board Chair of Strategic Health Intelligence, the Pensacola Health Information Exchange. Through these positions, I am able to engage in all six challenges facing healthcare today: safety, effectiveness, having a patient center, timeliness, efficiency, and equality.

Aware - PBS Special Report

I completed filming a PBS special report on the Aware program with Dee Dee Sharp.  Our focus was on Ebola and Enterovirus Preparations.  Very interesting topic that focused on community education.  It was nice to take the time to filter through the information and make it easy to understand the implications for a community as a whole.  Special thanks to PBS for hosting this informative program.

HIMSS Reference Library Addition

My  presentation at HIMSS 2014 has been added to the HIMSS reference library.  It can be seen and downloaded by clicking here.

If you would like to arrange a speaking engagement, Contact me.

Medication Reconciliation (Med Rec) can be addressed?  Yes, it can be done.  Baptist Health Care became one of the only health systems in the country to submit Med Rec as a menu item for MU Stage 1.  The requirement is that 50% of all transitions have a completed electronic Med Rec.  Amazingly, Baptist completed the attestation with over 88% compliance, and after looking at the data, this has saved hundreds of medication errors every month.  Considering that 10% of medication errors are considered serious, finding these errors has saved lives!

Baptist has finished attestation for Meaningful Use Stage 1, with over 90% adoption by providers.  Wow!  That is really unheard of.   On top of that, Baptist chose to include Medication Reconcilliation as a menu item for attestation because our adoption for Med Rec was over 80%.  This puts Baptist in the elite group of hospitals that are approaching this with an "all in" mentality, and is putting patient safety first and foremost.  

I still work about four days a month clinically, practicing Emergency Medicine at the Baptist Hospital Trauma Center in Pensacola, Thomas Hospital in Fairhope,  and Jay Hospital. I completed Board Certification in Emergency Medicine in 2003 and joined Baldwin Emergency Physicians (BEP) in Fairhope, Alabama. After joining, I became the Medical Director of the Emergency Department at Thomas Hospital (2005) and completed an MBA degree from Auburn University (2008). Outside of my work with BEP, I had interest in quality improvement and information technology. I also put effort into staying involved with the lean and process improvement projects involving the entire system. This fostered my move in 2011 to Baptist Health Care, which has become fertile ground for new ideas, including ACO development, telemedicine, CPOE and meaningful use measures, population health management, and wellness programs. I am excited to be here, and look forward to confronting the challenges that we face in healthcare.