8 TECH OUTLOOKSeptember - 2019IN MY OPINIONHow a Clinical Focus Group and Electronic Medical Records Improved Post-Partum OutcomesBy Michael Marino, SVP and Chief Medical Information Officer, Providence St. Joseph HealthIn my role as Chief Medical Information Officer at Providence St. Joseph Health, my team and I are at the intersection of technology and clinical practice in delivering high-value patient care. As part of the Information Services (IT) organization at PSJH, my team and I wear our hats as technologists who are also medical experts around clinical processes. We marry the technology-based innovations to what our clinical leadership in each specialty area of medicine have identified as proven, evidence-based clinical best practices. When this merging of clinical best practices and technology works, we improve health outcomes for our patients and broader communities.One primary focus of my clinical informatics specialty is around the electronic medical records (EMR) technologies that collect the charting data and notes made by our physicians and nurses, and then follow the patient through all the touch points of their care in our system. We are in the process of moving to a single EMR system called Epic, across our large, multi-state health system. Using Epic as a single record that aggregates multiple streams of data gives us a framework to match a patient's history to specific known risk profiles, and then help our busy clinicians identify high-risk patients and provide a recommended slate of tests and criteria to carefully follow.One of the biggest--and frankly, most shocking--opportunities we still have in the U.S. is to improve health outcomes for new moms who are vulnerable to complications after giving birth that can result in postpartum hemorrhage. We are one of only 13 countries in the world where the rate of maternal mortality has actually increased over the past 25 years. Postpartum hemorrhage is a leading cause of maternal mortality. And it's preventable. This is the perfect sort of problem for us at PSJH--solving an important health challenge, at-scale, applying technology in the most practical of ways.
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