Mercy's Kathleen Perry Named A Winner in the 2020 CIO of the Year Orbie Awards Competition

Kathleen Perry, Senior Vice President and CIO of Mercy Health Services, has been named among the 2020 CIO of the Year® ORBIE® Award winners by CapitalCIO. CapitalCIO recognized chief information officers in seven key categories – Leadership, Global, Enterprise, Corporate, Public Sector, Healthcare, and Nonprofit.

“Kathleen has that rare ability to seamlessly bridge the gap between the changing tides and trends in health care information technology and the day-to-day goals and objectives of administrators, medical personnel, and the patients that we serve.  With patient experience, IT cost containment, and innovation as her key priorities, Kathleen is further guided by the mission and values of The Sisters of Mercy -- Dignity, Hospitality, Justice, Excellence, Stewardship and Prayer – in everything she does,” said Dr. David Maine, President and CEO, Mercy Health Services, Mercy Medical Center.

“I am greatly humbled and honored to receive this award, which reflects not merely my own efforts, but that of the entire Mercy Information Technology team. Without their support and continued dedication to excellence, this would not have been possible,” Ms. Perry said.

The CIO of the Year ORBIE Awards is the premier technology executive recognition program in the United States. Since inception in 1998, over 1,200 CIOs have been honored as finalists and over 300 CIO of the Year winners have received the prestigious ORBIE Award. The ORBIE honors chief information officers who have demonstrated excellence in technology leadership. Finalists and winners are selected by an independent peer review process, led by prior ORBIE recipients, based upon:

• Leadership and management effectiveness
• Business value created by technology innovation
• Engagement in industry and community endeavors

“The CapitalCIO ORBIE winners demonstrate the value great leadership creates. Especially in these uncertain times, CIOs are leading in unprecedented ways and enabling the largest work-from-home experiment in history,” according to Jen Wise, Executive Director of CapitalCIO. “The ORBIE Awards are meaningful because they are judged by peers - CIOs who understand how difficult this job is and why great leadership matters.”

According to Dr. Maine, Kathleen has served as a “key thought leader and proponent of technological change at Mercy” for more than 13 years as CIO. She is one of only a handful of nurses across the country leading technology for a comprehensive healthcare system. She joined what was then known as Mercy’s MIS (Management Information Systems) in 1992 for the implementation of Meditech. Kathleen began her Mercy career in 1977 as a Medical-Surgical nurse before joining the Intensive Care Unit where she was highly regarded for excellence and compassion. Today, Kathleen leads more than 100 staff in Information Technology and Clinical Technology (Mercy had a staff of 12 in 1992).

Kathleen played a central role in bringing state-of-the-art technology to $400+ million, state-of-the-art inpatient facility, Mercy’s Mary Catherine Bunting Center, when it opened in 2010.  Under her leadership, Mercy launched the Epic Electronic Health System platform to its ambulatory care network sites in 2013. This was no simple task, given Mercy’s expansive outpatient network which includes more than 70 primary care providers and 7 primary and specialty care hubsites throughout Central Maryland (Overlea, Lutherville, Glen Burnie, Reisterstown, Baltimore City Downtown, Columbia, Annapolis).

Through her efforts, Mercy was able to integrate the Epic MyChart system on multiple platforms (i.e. desktop, mobile) to give patients easy access to their medical records, to make physician appointments, review their prescriptions, etc., and in so doing, provide patients with an important tool in their medical care.  Under Kathleen, Mercy’s IT Division launched a series of remote and on-site training programs for all Epic users, helping providers and their support staff achieve quick mastery of the system to the benefit of their practices. Further, by finalizing the Epic implementation to include both inpatient and outpatient care delivery, providers found they could easily exchange patient data to improve patient care. Mercy providers now had the ability to coordinate care with clinicians outside of the hospital, closing care gaps and reducing duplication.

In the face of the challenges raised in 2020 by COVID-19, Kathleen was able to fast-track efforts to launch telemedicine across all of Mercy’s primary and specialty care hubsites, moving the timetable a full fiscal year ahead of schedule. The Mercy telemedicine program was made available to patients via the existing MyChart system, integrated with a secure connection to Zoom.

As Christopher Thomaskutty, Senior VP of Clinical Programs, Chief of Staff, Mercy Health Services, commented, “It’s been a tremendous effort between Mercy physicians, technicians, and administrators to create a telemedicine platform fully integrated with EPIC, Mercy’s state-of-the-art electronic health record system. Kathleen and her team have worked diligently with Mercy physicians and staff to utilize the technology for the benefit of their patients who need care.”