25 CIOs Transforming Healthcare
June 21, 2012 10:00 AM InformationWeek Healthcare's second annual list of IT executives highlights the exceptional thinkers and doers who are moving patient care forward.
Linda Reed, Atlantic Health System
As VP and CIO of Atlantic Health System, a three-hospital group in New Jersey, Linda Reed does more than maintain information systems. She's also president of Jersey Health Connect, a regional health information exchange that connects 18 hospitals, two independent physician groups, and a long-term-care facility.
Reed's other big project is developing an infrastructure for Atlantic's new accountable care organization, which includes its own hospitals; Valley Hospital in Ridgewood, N.J.; and more than 1,200 physicians.
In other areas, Atlantic has added electronic nursing documentation, electronic medication administration, and computerized physician order entry in the last five years. Partly because nurses were empowered to use CPOE early on, all inpatient orders are now entered electronically, Reed said.
Physician use of the system "goes up and down," she admits. "You have to remind them to keep doing it." Eventually, she said, Atlantic will simply eliminate paper order forms.
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