CHIME Announces 2008 Innovator of the Year

Ann Arbor, MI, October 31, 2008 – CHIME member Rick Schooler, VP & CIO of Orlando Health, was announced as recipient of the 2008 CHIME Innovator of the Year Award. Given at the CHIME08 Fall CIO Forum in Henderson, Nevada, the award recognizes Mr. Schooler’s commitment to the healthcare IT field.


CHIME’s Innovator of the Year Award recognizes healthcare CIOs who are using IT applications in creative and exciting new ways. Mr. Schooler’s project focused on shortening the time it took to discharge patients once they had been told they were able to leave the hospital. Because all physicians who treated the patients needed to give consent before the patient could leave, skilled nurses were spending time on the phone trying to track down doctors. To alleviate this problem, save time and allow nurses to spend more time with patients, he used a computer-integrated telephony and IVR (interactive voice response) technology to automate the discharge process. Using the services of Nortel, he was able to begin, design and implement an IVR

Other benefits of this technology include a savings in both time and money by providing a discharge earlier in the day, the opportunity for more admissions by creating bed space earlier in the day and the ability for a data-driven continuous process improvement by database analysis and application.

For more information about CHIME’s Innovator of the Year Award, contact CHIME at 734-665-0000 or visit www.cio-chime.org.

UPDATED: 11/5/2008 10:20:30 AM