A Conversation With ... Paul Merrywell

What is your role?
Basically, to facilitate technology solutions in my region as provided by Mercy’s information services division. I help clarify requests and business needs and turn those into technology solutions. The central region includes facilities and clinics in Joplin, Springfield, northwest Arkansas, Fort Smith and Hot Springs.

The city of Springfield is pursuing test-city status for ultra high-speed Internet through Google, but tell us about similar capabilities already in use by Mercy and St. John’s.
There are a number of networks and technologies that Mercy employs to connect all of the various communities within Mercy – Springfield being one of those – to Mercy’s data center in St. Louis. We provide a high-speed redundant network for all the clinics, all the facilities and hospitals throughout Mercy, to make connections between each other and the data center, for moving medical information to the point where it’s needed. … If you’re on Mercy’s network in virtually any facility, you can see a digital CT scan in a matter of seconds.

How will completion of Mercy’s $60 million Mercy Data Center – now in final stages of construction near St. Louis – take things up a notch?
It’s going to dramatically change our position in terms of technology. It’s going to provide us with ... uninteruptable power supply and backup generators (and) a level of protection from environmental-type disasters that we don’t currently have.

Why is technological connectivity important in the health care sector?
It’s actually bringing to the point of care ... and making available … any and all of the resources that Mercy may have. For example, take a small rural facility. They may be able to take an image of you, but they may not have, in that community, a person to do the proper diagnosis or do the diagnosis instantly. In our facilities, those images can be, in a matter of seconds, transmitted to a location where a diagnostic technician or physician can make the proper diagnosis. … They can say, “We don’t need to see you in the larger facility, this is what they need to give you or take care of.” Or, maybe, even more importantly, “We do need to see you in the large facility because you have a very serious condition.” … Technology is a very good way to improve access.

Bolivar-based Citizens Memorial Healthcare recently partnered with Google to give patients better access to their personal health records. Is Mercy exploring similar access for its patients?
Absolutely. It’s actually being piloted, and there are a few physicians across Mercy in the process of doing a test with a number of their patients, and we’re learning more about what we can do with that and taking the feedback from the patients and the doctors and (tweaking) it. I don’t know that there’s a formal release date on that yet, but we expect it to be coming out in the summertime.

How does the health system protect patient data?
Mercy ascribes to all industry standards and uses all technologies available to prevent disclosure of information to unintended parties. … The employees at Mercy are very much educated about the (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) and all the precautions that need to be taken in terms of securing their information. Patients do have concerns about disclosure of their personal health records, but the information never really leaves our network, (which is) isolated and protected (with) millions of dollars of security hardware and software.

How does Mercy choose which new technologies to bring on board?
Within Mercy, there’s a very extensive planning process. We take feedback from physicians, clinicians and business leaders within the organization, and we develop plans and go out and seek their guidance. … It’s a very collaborative process and sometimes can be lengthy, but you don’t make the right decisions at the snap of a finger.