Parkview Health’s Chief Information Officer Ron Double has been named a Tech Exec of the Year by the Indianapolis Business Journal.
Double was one of three executives picked statewide in the nonprofit category for the 2023 class of honorees.
Double has been with Parkview for more than 30 years, serving in five different information technology roles before being named chief information officer in 2008. He now oversees all of Parkview’s technology needs for its more than 15,000 co-workers across its 12 hospital campuses, hundreds of Parkview Physicians Group facilities and home offices in northeast Indiana and northwest Ohio.
“Technology has become an integral part of modern healthcare delivery,” said Rick Henvey, CEO, Parkview Health. “Ron has taken Parkview from the days of pen and paper into the digital age, allowing Parkview to serve its patients with the efficiency, accuracy and intelligence that technology brings to the healthcare industry.”
One of Double’s most notable achievements during his time as chief information officer has been introducing and implementing Epic within Parkview. Epic is Parkview’s electronic medical records system that connects countless systems within hospitals and outpatient facilities, ranging from creation, management and storage of patient health information; to data collection, analysis and predicative modeling from interconnected medical devices; to workflow tools allowing clinicians to more easily document information, complete daily tasks with increased speed and accuracy, and provide more efficient and effective care through use of software at the point-of-care.
Double also led development of Parkview Community Connect, a program to extend Parkview’s instance of Epic and associated applications to support independent, non-Parkview hospitals and providers in the region, creating a “single regional story of care” for patients no matter where they receive care.
Under Double’s leadership, Parkview was recognized earlier this year with Stage 7 Validation from the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), a globally recognized adviser in health information technology. Parkview achieved Stage 7, the highest certification level, for the HIMSS Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model (EMRAM), which is the international assessment for hospitals, and for the HIMSS Outpatient Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model (O-EMRAM), the assessment for outpatient facilities.
For the most current version of the EMRAM assessment, Parkview is one of only 67 organizations globally to reach Stage 7, placing it among the top 20% of health systems. Meanwhile, its Stage 7 O-EMRAM rating puts Parkview in a class of only 15% of outpatient facilities to reach that level.
Double and the IS team also pivoted quickly to address the change in work environments following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, building systems to implement greater virtual healthcare capabilities as well as supporting Parkview’s many co-workers who now work remotely.
Double is active with multiple northeast Indiana organizations working in information technology, including serving as vice chair of the Northeast Indiana Innovation Center board of directors. He is also a member of the computer science and information technology professional advisory boards for Trine University and Purdue University Fort Wayne, and a board member for Tech Point.
