Connect with Encompass Health Encompass Health

Artificial intelligence is all the buzz lately, but how are healthcare providers using it to enhance patient care and outcomes? In this episode of Connect, Dayle Unger, clinical IT advisor for Encompass Health, and Andy Lueders, senior manager and lead consultant with Oracle Cerner, discuss how the two companies partnered together to create some of the first predictive analytics models in the post-acute care space. Using AI and machine learning, the models utilize data from Encompass Health's EHR to help reduce hospital readmissions and falls while in the inpatient rehabilitation setting. They also offer insights into implementing models such as these and getting buy in from clinicians. After all, the models, they both note, are designed to support clinical decision-making, not replace it. 

Healthcare is always evolving, but as a clinician, how do you keep up and implement change in a method which is science-based and beneficial to your patients? It's a challenge most healthcare professionals face, but it can be overcome. In this episode of Connect, Cheryl Miller, vice president of therapy operations, shares how her team puts evidence-based research into everyday practice at Encompass Health rehabilitation hospitals. Also, learn how Encompass Health is contributing to evidence-based research in the inpatient rehabilitation space through its therapy grant program.

What does it mean to have a patient-centered IT department? In this episode of Connect, Encompass Health's Darren Freeman, vice president of corporate systems and business intelligence, and Jake Knight, associate director of business intelligence data warehouse, discuss with host Mary Ellen DeBardeleben how IT plays a critical role in patient care at Encompass Health. The proprietary platform developed by their team, Beacon, helps support clinicians in caring for patients by taking data from various sources and visualizing them in an easy-to-read manner to tell a greater story and identify trends to improve patient care at the hospital and company level.

When Dawn Rock's mentor and supervisor approached her early in her career to help start a compliance department from the ground up, Rock recalls thinking, "That sounds terrible." But her mentor challenged her to grow and try something new. Today, Rock is the chief compliance officer for Encompass Health. Had it not been for her mentor pushing her, Rock said she would not be in the role she is. In this episode of Connect, Rock talks with host Mary Ellen DeBardeleben on the importance of mentors and being open to new opportunities, as well as why you should embrace your differences.

Lynne Lee is Encompass Health's vice president of risk management. She has been with the company for nearly 20 years, but before that she was an emergency department nurse. During the two decades she served as a nurse, Lee continued her education. She has not one, but two masters, as well as a law degree. In our latest episode of Connect, learn how she managed working and getting an education, as well as what it's like to be the point of contact for more than 30, 000 employees during a global pandemic.

Renee Tyree was an active college student well on her way to becoming a doctor when an illness left her paralyzed from the waist down. Well before the Americans with Disabilities Act, her dreams of becoming a doctor were crushed, but she didn't give up. Tyree is now the director of pharmacy for Encompass Health's West region. In this episode of Connect, she and host Mary Ellen DeBardeleben discuss Tyree's journey after her disability, which includes earning not just one medal, but three, from the Paralympics, as well as a successful career in healthcare, even though many told her she should give up.