EP246: Even a Dream House Needs Plumbing, and Even Visionary Innovation Needs a Capable EHR Infrastructure, With Pam Arora, SVP and CIO at Children’s Health in Dallas

In this health care podcast, Pam Arora, SVP and CIO at Children’s Health in Dallas, talks about the work she and her team are doing. Spoiler alert: It’s pretty visionary. They have integrated telemedicine solutions in schools and in patients’ homes. They’ve also been monitoring adherence to vital transplant meds by putting chips on the capsules. They have initiatives happening with voice and GPS technology. I asked Pam what it takes to get all of this done while, at the same time, balancing the usual suspects—the EHR upgrades, the security patches, the virtual desktops, the inevitable panic of the month.

Pam explains her answer far more eloquently than I’m going to be able to recap here, but in a nutshell, she says it’s all about getting the fundamentals right. A hospital, a health system, needs a capable, robust EHR infrastructure that really works. She further adds that attaining that infrastructure takes a lot of things, but one of them is a relentless attention to the details, particularly the details around what exactly and specifically patients and their families want and need.

I met Pam at the NODE.Health conference earlier this year in New York City.

You can learn more at childrens.com or on
Twitter at @ChildrensTheOne. 

You can also connect with Pam on Twitter at @pkarora.

Pamela Arora serves as senior vice president, information services, and chief information officer (CIO) and is responsible for directing all efforts of the information services groups in the organization. Her oversight encompasses systems and technology, health information management, and health care technology management and support.

Pamela joined the Children’s Health team in 2007. With more than 30 years of experience in Information Technology, Pamela is a proven leader with a history of achieving results in large corporations in various industries, as well as in entrepreneurial endeavors. Prior to her arrival at Children’s Health, she served as the SVP and CIO at UMass Memorial Health Care in Worcester, Massachusetts, and CIO of Perot Systems in Dallas, Texas.

In 2010, she was instrumental in leading Children’s Health in achieving the Health Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Stage 7 Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model award designation. Under her leadership, Children’s Health has been named multiple times to the InformationWeek500, InformationWeek Elite 100, and Hospitals & Health Networks’ Most Wired. In 2013, Children’s Health was named a HIMSS Enterprise Davies Award winner for the organization’s innovative use of the electronic health record as well as Health Information Trust Alliance Common Security Framework certification.

Pamela is a member of HIMSS and serves as a HIMSS Davies Award judge. She is also a member of the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) and the Children’s Hospital Association (CHA). In 2015, Pamela was named one of the top 50 leaders in Health IT by Becker’s Health IT & CIO Review, and in the same year, she received the Dallas Business Journal Women in Technology Award. Pamela has spoken and continues to speak and lecture at IT-related health care events across the nation and internationally.

Pamela holds an MBA from Southern Methodist University and a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Wayne State University.

02:12 What Children’s Health’s telemedicine program looks like and its wide reach into 140 schools.
03:03 “We truly want to be where children live, learn, and play.”
03:22 “We prefer to be out in the community wherever possible for those wellness programs.”
06:50 Making pediatric medication with chips possible.
10:26 EP203 with Greg Makoul of PatientWisdom.
11:41 “We, in health care, have to do a better job with the patient experience.”
13:07 Geisinger study on food deserts.
13:35 Children’s Health pilot programs with Alexa.
15:10 “I think that the real game changer is when you think of people in their home setting.”
15:30 From the pediatric standpoint, the “digital natives” and the positive benefit this presents.
19:01 “You do the visionary projects, but you recognize that you have to address the details in a relentless way.”
25:41 Governance processes and orienting everyone around the same goal.
27:06 Data’s place in this process.
27:16 The importance of defining your data.
29:00 Meaningful use and its usefulness.
29:23 “We need to be able to share data with the food banks and the YMCAs etc.”