Caring for more than nine million patients across dozens medical settings and hundreds of care settings as a provider as well as serving this community as a payer, Kaiser Permanente occupies a fairly unique position in the landscape of American healthcare. In many ways, the name has become synonymous with providing high-quality care through the use of innovative health IT systems and services. From EHR and health IT systems for clinicians, radiologists, and pharmacists to a patient portal and mobile application with four million and two million users, respectively, the business of delivering “life-critical systems” at Kaiser Permanente is extensive, says Phil Fasano.
For the past six years, Fasano has served as the CIO for the organization and overseen the continuous development and upgrading of its technical infrastructure. Based on his experience running such a large-scale operation, in this EHRintelligence.com Q&A Fasano explains how a commitment to improving the delivery of care fosters a culture of innovation and use of state-of-the-art health IT at one of the nation’s top healthcare organizations.