Clinical Informatics Update

In July, Providence announced a new streamlined division operating model that would free up resources for the frontlines, help our ministries and affiliates adapt to a fast-changing world, and empower local decision-making to meet the unique needs of their communities which has resulted in changes to executive leadership in Clinical Informatics (CI).

Maulin Shah, MD, VP, CI Engineering as Interim CI Leader
With the early-October departure of Dr. Michael Marino, Chief Medical Informatics Officer (CMIO), SVP, Clinical Informatics, and Michelle Woodley, RN, Chief Nursing Informatics Officer (CNIO), VP, Clinical Informatics, Maulin Shah, MD, VP, Clinical Informatics Engineering will assume interim leadership of CI, reporting to Ivette de Rubens, GVP IS & RESO Strategy & Centers of Excellence. The Clinical Informatics leadership team’s first priority is to stabilize day-to-day operations and ensure clear reporting relationships and lines of accountability that allow us to continue serving our patients, caregivers and the Mission. Clinical Informatics will also be partnering with Ivette on the new VP Clinical IT Solutions role and how IS engages with division leadership. As Providence continues to evolve, Clinical Informatics will refine its model to best support our caregivers. The role of Clinical Informatics has always been to help caregivers take the best care of our patients and that will never change.

Thank you to Dr. Marino and Michelle Woodley, RN
We want to thank Dr. Marino and Michelle for their long careers with Providence and legacy St. Joseph Health, and their many critical contributions.

Dr. Marino began his Providence journey as a St. Jude-based pediatrician, then spent over three years as the St. Jude ministry Chief Medical Officer, before later transitioning into St. Joseph Health IT leadership in 2012. In that role, he helped with the system IT integration of St. Joseph Health transition into the Providence family of organizations, including co-leading the integration of electronic health record (EHR) systems into a single instance of Providence Epic.

Michelle joined legacy St. Joseph Health nearly three decades ago, first with Mission Hospital Mission Viejo, where she helped lead the build-out of the advanced cardiac center, then served for five years as a clinical IT integration executive, leaving for a stint with Dignity Health, before returning in 2012 as CNIO. Michelle was also instrumental in the integration of nursing informatics teams when the health systems integrated as Providence St. Joseph Health in 2016, as well as the major transition of our St. Joseph clinicians onto Epic and our system onto the aligned Providence single instance.

CI Regional Strategic Operations (StratOps) Chief Nursing Informatics Officers (CNIO)
The Regional StratOps teams will be realigned as a Division Informatics teams under the leadership of April Kallestad, RN, CNIO for the North division, Kelly Bottoni, RN, CNIO for the Central division, and Karen Walters, RN, CNIO for the South division. April, Kelly, and Karen will report to Elizabeth Petrich Kennedy, RN. The CNIOs will continue to lead distributed teams of informaticists in the divisions.

Chief Medical Information Officers (CMIO)
The Acute CMIO team will support the division Chief Medical Officers with Anurag Jindal, MD, CMIO for the North division, Nicole Schmidt, MD, CMIO for the Central division, and Weip Chen, MD, CMIO for the South division all reporting to Dr. Shah. Kang Hsu, MD, will continue his role as Acute Care CMIO, leading the System Provider Informatics team and helping to lead the Provider Integration Team with Elizabeth Hahn, RN. Scott Smitherman, MD will evolve his role as AVP, Ambulatory CMIO to align with the Providence Clinical Network, reporting to Maulin.

Clinical Architects, Government Programs & Compliance, Optimization, Projects, Specialty Focus, and Decision Support
In an effort to consolidate teams that frequently work together, Elizabeth Petrich Kennedy, RN will assume leadership of the Epic Clinical Optimization (ECO) program, Informatics Projects, Specialty Focus Informatics, and Decision Support teams in addition to her existing Clinical Architect and Government Programs & Compliance teams. Jennifer Ulrich and Phil Miller, RN will now report to Elizabeth to help lead these efforts.

Education, Logistics and Program Operations
Linda Privette, RN, and the Education team will report to Heather Bartlett, RN. Heather will continue to lead our Logistics and Program Operations teams.

Pharmacy, Genomics, and Lab Informatics
Les Brooks will maintain the reporting relationship for Lab Informatics led by Joleen Borg, MS, MLS (ASCP). Julie Atay, PharmD and the Pharmacy Informatics team will transition to report to Les. Julie will take on the additional role of supporting the emerging Personalized Medicine and Genomics service line.

Community Technologies, HIE, and EST/Carelink Support
Gina Harris, RN and Steve Girolami, MD will continue to lead the Community Technology CI program which will now report to Les Brooks. Theo Siagian and the Health Informatics Exchange (HIE) team will also report to Les, as will Shari Titus and the Epic Support Team and Epic Carelink team.

Home & Community Care and Business & Retail
Kirsten Thrower, RN will maintain responsibility for our Home & Community Care and Business & Retail Informatics teams. She will also continue to support the many ambulatory, post-acute, and Population Health strategies where she currently provides informatics leadership and expertise.

Ambulatory Informatics
Scott Smitherman, MD will continue to lead System Ambulatory Informatics, including Virtual Support, Projects and Communication, Efficiency and Usability, Superuser Programs, and Specialty Optimization. Seth Crouch will continue to lead distributed teams of informatics across all divisions.

For a visual representation of the functional responsibilities and how they will be distributed, please see the CI functional org chart.

We know that changes in CI directly impact our physicians and clinicians delivering patient care as well as our IS colleagues that we collaborate with. Our commitment remains to support our caregivers at the bedside and provide them the best tools to deliver safe, efficient, high-quality care that is accessible and affordable for all. CI remains committed to maintaining collaborative working relationships with colleagues across IS as we partner to meet organizational needs. While the next months will be challenging, as we adapt and adjust to our streamlined teams, we remain committed to our critical role, Mission, and vision of health for a better world.