MedStar Health does things a little bit differently. In addition to the chief information officer — a role Scott MacLean has held since 2018 — the 10-hospital system also has a chief innovation officer, chief digital transformation officer, and a VP of performance improvement and analytics. And MacLean wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I like the way it’s organized because our technology infrastructure is what runs all of these things and enables programs to be able to thrive,” he said during a podcast interview with Kate Gamble, Managing Editor at healthsystemCIO. It has also enabled a focus on digital transformation “that’s more than just technology.”

It’s a philosophy that he believes will serve MedStar well as the organization surges ahead with plans that were altered due to the pandemic and moves toward the ultimate goal of “systemness.” In the interview, MacLean talks about how his team is dealing with the myriad challenges brought on by Covid; the enormous step he took when he first came to MedStar; what he hopes to accomplish with the CHIME Board; and how volunteering in Baltimore has helped him became part of the community.

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Key Takeaways

* MedStar Health has a “full swath of projects across informatics, application, infrastructure, and security spaces,” with the biggest focused on converting to Cerner’s capacity management system.

* When MedStar’s final hospital went live on Cerner in late 2021, the staff leveraged a combination of onsite and remote at-the-elbow support to train users.

* Ensuring devices and systems are upgraded and patched “is a never-ending battle,” said MacLean. “All of these things need to be in working order.”

* Having a digital platform is about much more than portals; it’s about “getting ourselves and our physicians to a place where it’s easy for patients to interact with us and get the care they need.”

Q&A with Scott MacLean, CIO, Medstar Health, Part 1

Gamble:  The last time I spoke to you, it was just before the pandemic. I’d like to focus on what the recovery process has been like at MedStar, and how you’ve been able to move forward with some of the projects that were delayed. First, what do you consider to be some of your top priorities right now?

MacLean:  Sure. We’re still focused on taking care of the people in this region and whatever dangers are there stemming from the Covid pandemic and public health issues. We have a full swath of projects going on across the informatics application, infrastructure, and security spaces.

Probably the biggest one we’re focused on now is capacity management, bed management, transport, and environmental services within the Cerner environment. We’re converting our myriad systems used for bed management to the Cerner capacity management system. That’s an enterprise endeavor, just like doing implementations of our EHR in the enterprise model, which we completed at the beginning of 2021 when we went live with our tenth hospital. We’ll continue to build out the EHR platform that we call MedConnect using the Cerner capabilities.

We also have a big project with acute case management that we’re working on and will finish later this year. We’re doing positive patient ID for blood and breast milk which I think will put us in a better place for applying for HIMSS Stage 6 and 7 ratings. We’re also doing projects around anatomic pathology, ordering and tracking using bar coding technology. Those are just a few of the highlight projects we’re doing in the application space.

In the infrastructure space,