McNutt, Spooner Honored at CHIME Fall Forum

Pam McNutt, Bill Spooner, and Gary Barnes were among the individuals recognized for outstanding leadership, and Sutter Health and Trinity Health were among the organizations acknowledged for their contributions to the field at the CHIME13 Fall CIO Forum, held last week in Scottsdale, Ariz.

McNutt, who serves as senior VP and CIO of Methodist Health System, and Spooner, senior VP and CIO of Sharp HealthCare, were co-recipients of the inaugural Federal Public Policy Award, which recognizes policy leadership by a CHIME member for a number of activities, including educating policymakers on the value of health IT, testifying before federal workgroups or Congressional committees, visiting representatives, and providing feedback on federal initiatives.

In addition to participating in workgroups to help develop comments on regulatory issues, McNutt and Spooner have served on Policy Steering Committee since its inception, said Sharon Canner, senior director of CHIME Public Policy. “They have testified before federal advisory committees and have been able to respond to issues with broad insight from across the spectrum of all organizations, not just their own.”

The CHIME Outstanding Service Award went to Barnes, who is the CIO at Medical Center Health System in Odessa, Texas. In addition to serving on the CHIME Board of Directors from 2009 to 2012 and holding the position of treasurer in 2012, Barnes has been actively involved in CHIME’s Certified Healthcare CIO (CHCIO) Program from the beginning, working on item writing and validation while also being part of the certification eligibility and model committee.

“I have had the pleasure of knowing Gary for well over 25 years and know him to be a committed professional, not only to healthcare but also to the CIO profession,” said Chuck Christian, VP/CIO at St. Francis Hospital, who nominated Barnes for the award.

Other award winners include the following:

• Sutter Health earned the CHIME 2013 Innovator of the Year Award for its work in providing secure mobile tablets to more than 1,000 home care clinicians, which helped improve access to up-to-date clinical information and enhanced efficiency while resulting in more timely and personalized patient care. Sutter Care at Home’s caregivers now use tablets as their sole computing device when caring for more than 35,000 home health and hospice patients across Northern California.
• Cerner and the Trinity Health division of the now-merged CHE Trinity Health received the 2013 Collaboration Award for their joint efforts to reduce, detect and respond to sepsis, a severe blood condition that can lead to organ failure and death. In 2010, the two organizations teamed up to develop a series of evidence-based strategies to detect the early warning signs, and meet the needs of accelerating an accurate diagnosis and treatment of sepsis. As a result, Trinity Health saw a drop in mortality rates related to sepsis from 15.8 percent to 13 percent.
• Larry Grandia, a 45-year veteran of healthcare IT, was presented with the Industry Leader Award. As one of the first healthcare CIOs, Grandia helped introduce the process of applying computer technology to the provision of care in the 1960s while working with LDS Hospital in Salt Lake City, and spent two decades leading the IT direction and strategy at Intermountain Healthcare. Currently serving as a member of the Board of Directors at Health Catalyst, Grandia also held executive positions with vendor organizations, and was one of CHIME’s founding members.
• Texas Children’s Hospital received the 2013 Transformational Leadership Award for its data-driven approach to care improvement, which has resulted in increased productivity and reduced costs. The initiative, led by CIO Myra Davis and TCH president and CEO Mark Wallace, has led to $4.5 million in direct benefits to the organization. Through its data warehouse and its data discovery application, TCH has also been able to prioritize its quality improvement programs, according to Wallace.

[Editor’s note: The original post did not include mention of the award received by Texas Children’s Hospital. We have since updated the article, and we sincerely apologize for the oversight.]