Community Announcement
On Tuesday, December 4 beginning at 7:00AM, your community hospital will start on an incredibly important journey that is all about harnessing “the cloud” to serve you even better.
Michael McKay, Chief Information Officer
During the early part of 2017, the Board of Directors held a strategic planning retreat that culminated in a list of 7 strategic planning priorities referenced as Vision 2020. Chief among them was a directive to build a strategy to integrate IT systems by 2020. In record time, the hospital’s Chief Information Officer (CIO), Michael McKay, linked arms with his Leadership colleagues and, in an extraordinarily complex world of information systems solutions, identified just the right one for us. That system, Athena Health Network, is ready to launch here at WCH next week!
What does this mean for the patients, families, and communities we serve? In simple terms, as the Board of Directors envisioned, we’ll replace two major information systems with one. That’s the essence of integration. The “river” that ran through our electronic communication systems was Rose Lane. It is, as you know, the geographic barrier that separates the main Hospital building from Community Hospital Clinic – Wickenburg. On one side of the road was the Hospital’s primary information system, CPSI, and on the other side of the road was the Clinic’s information system, Greenway. Remember registering in one system to see your clinic provider and then registering in another system to access hospital-based services? For our patients that meant the frustration of two medical records for one episode of care and two invoices as well. This old and tired era will end very soon!
Starting next week, the Hospital’s new cloud-based system will progressively bring a new era of electronic communications to our health care system organization-wide. This includes our clinics in Bagdad, Congress, and Wittman as well.
While this is an exciting and transformative change, any initiative of this magnitude will require time to perfect. Our outstanding employees are excited for the go-live next Tuesday, but they’re also somewhat nervous and anxious. Training on the new system doesn’t replace the experience of actually turning on the switch and using the system in real time. We want to make this as convenient for all of you as possible and so we’ll do our best to not slow your visit down….too much. I’m asking you to be patient patients while our employees are in training. Thanks for your kindness and consideration.
Jim Tavary, President & Chief Executive Officer
We are committed to providing World Class service to you at all times. These important new IS changes are all about that commitment because we subscribe to the belief that computers do the calculations to allow people to change the world. This new technology means we can change the world in important ways just for you!