Innovation Officer At D-H Resigns
Lebanon — The executive in charge of digitalizing and networking the medical records system and other information management technologies at Dartmouth-Hitchcock has “left … to pursue other opportunities,” according to Rick Adams, a D-H spokesman.
Adams confirmed the departure of Terry Carroll, D-H’s chief innovation officer, but declined to say under what circumstances or when Carroll had left other than that the departure had occurred during the current calendar year.
Carroll could not be reached for comment. According to D-H’s tax returns, he became CIO on Aug. 19, 2013, and was paid $204,000 in the fiscal year that ended 10 months and 12 days later.
News of Carroll’s departure surfaced as D-H is preparing for an Oct. 1 expansion of its four-year-old effort to use electronic records to reduce costs and streamline the flow of information inside a medical care system with more than 1,000 primary care doctors and specialists, 396 hospital beds and $1.4 billion in annual revenue.
At the heart of that project has been a software package from a vendor called Epic Systems, a privately held Wisconsin-based maker of computer programs for medium and large hospitals and medical systems. Next month, D-H aims to begin using Epic software to operate its billing and scheduling systems as well as the medical records at its Concord community medical group, Adams said.
For the past four years, D-H has used Epic software in the computers through which providers access medical records at D-H’s Lebanon, Manchester and Nashua facilities.
There is also a pharmacy component to the system, Adams said. The myD-H portal through which patients view information about upcoming and past appointments uses different software, he said.
In 2012, Forbes magazine reported that D-H had spent $80 million to acquire and install its package of Epic software.
During fiscal 2014, Dartmouth-Hitchcock collected $6.8 million in so-called “meaningful use incentives” from the federal Medicare and Vermont Medicaid programs, according to the hospital’s audited financial statement. Those payments were aimed to compensate hospitals and providers that met certain goals for use of electronic records.
Carroll graduated from St. Michael’s College in Winooski, Vt., and received master’s and doctoral degrees in biomedical engineering from Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Prior to joining D-H, he was the chief information officer for Fairview Health Services, a nonprofit hospital and clinic system in Minnesota with annual revenue of $3.6 billion.
A 2014 news release from D-H quoted Carroll as describing his role at D-H as “helping the organization think through new models and then building out those models.” Carroll aimed to expand the medical system’s existing electronic records software to develop analytic capabilities that could predict future trends, expand telehealth capabilities throughout northern New England and increase the use of social media, the release said.
Adams said Carroll’s departure won’t affect the upcoming technology changeover. “We are planning the launch as scheduled. There have been no setbacks,” he said. “We’re moving ahead.”
Rick Jurgens can be reached at rjurgens@vnews.com or 603-727-3229.
