BJC HealthCare’s Senior Vice President and Chief Information and Digital Officer Jerry Fox received the 2021 Chief Information Officer of the Year ORBIE Award in Health Care.
“It was also a great way for me to give back, you get to the point in your career where you want to make a difference, and healthcare is an industry where what you do really helps the community,” Jerry Fox said.
Fox is responsible for information technology, information security operations, biomedical engineering technology and strategic digital initiatives throughout BJC hospitals and health service organizations, including BJC virtual care.
“It’s not an individual award in my mind,” Fox said. “I’m fortunate to be the leader of a great time that has accomplished a tremendous amount of work over the last two to three years and has really stepped forward to serve our community really well.”
The CIO of the Year ORBIE Awards is the premier technology executive recognition program in the United States. The award signifies exceptional leadership, innovation and vision, to represent the characteristics and qualities that inspire others to achieve their potential.
“I have worked across multiple industries, but healthcare was a move I made so that I could be in an industry where I was closer to the outcome,” he said.
Fox joined BJC in 2017 and began implementing a vision for better serving BJC patients, regardless of where or how they needed medical services.
“It was also a great way for me to give back, you get to the point in your career where you want to make a difference, and healthcare is an industry where what you do really helps the community,” he said.
Under his leadership, the healthcare provider completed the largest system conversion ever with the enterprise-wide implementation of Epic electronic medical records across 15 hospitals. Fox led BJC to nimbly establish virtual patient care, including remote patient triage, video patient visits, remote patient monitoring, and virtual patient/family collaboration.
“Technology is a way to engage our consumers by giving them digital access to their records or a way of communicating with clinicians,” he said. “With this conversion, a patient is a patient, and their healthcare record follows them no matter the hospital they visit.”
The COVID-19 pandemic has created challenges for healthcare providers across the country. Fox said his top priority has been safety for hospital staff and the community.
“With our focus on safety, it allows us to really expand the way that we treat patients; one example is the increase we have seen in telemedicine, or video for clinicians to see patients by video for certain conditions,” he said. “The safety of our community, our clinicians, and patients is number one.”
According to a statement, at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, BJC technology teams introduced solutions to keep patients and clinical caregivers safe while also making technology available to support alternative work sites for nonclinical staff.
