Scott Whyte
Senior Director of Physician and Ambulatory IT Strategy
Catholic Healthcare West

As a result, CHW is constantly looking for innovative ways to better serve its patients and providers and had been evaluating connectivity products for the Arizona market. So, CHW was quick to respond when, in 2006, a competing Sacramento healthcare system indicated it would offer ambulatory EMRs to its affiliated physicians.

According to Scott Whyte, senior director of physician and ambulatory IT strategy, one of CHW’s earliest steps was to conduct physician focus groups in order to get a better understanding of the kind of patient clinical data that affiliated physicians wanted to receive electronically and how they wanted to receive it. First and foremost, physicians desired more timely delivery of clinical results in order to improve physician decision-making and provide better service to patients.

Physicians also wanted to improve administrative efficiency by eliminating—or at least greatly reducing—the number of manual steps needed to process clinical records and place orders with hospitals. And when one of the practice’s patients was treated at a CHW hospital, physicians wanted the ability to search electronically for patient information rather than having to call the hospital’s health information management department.

With an understanding of its affiliated physicals' needs, CHW began a rigorous selection process, ultimately selecting from five systems. Physician support was a major factor in CHW’s selection, according to Whyte: "We wanted to be sure that whether it was a physician, medical assistant, or administrative staffer, the vendor-staffed help desk would handle the call with urgency and would be able to respond in a manner that gave the utmost care to our physicians. MobileMD was the only vendor willing and able to provide front-line support."

CHW also sought a hosted, ASP solution that did not require any hardware to be installed at the physician’s office. "We wanted to minimize the footprint at the physician's office, so that there was nothing that we would ever need to go off-site to repair," Whyte says. “MobileMD’s was a solution without hardware at the physician's office."

And last but not least, pricing was a critical factor. Whyte describes MobileMD as a solution partner that, over the course of nearly three years, has worked with CHW to build an affordable, ever-expanding system that meets the needs of community physicians.

Now, with over 600 affiliated physicians utilizing MobileMD's Health Information Exchange or Enterprise Access systems to access clinical data from CHW and place orders, Whyte and CHW are very pleased with the results and future plans. According to Whyte, "MobileMD has been a highly responsive and effective vendor with a real knowledge of how to shape technology to meet the demanding requirements of healthcare organizations and their affiliated physicians."

Meet Scott Whyte:
Mr. Whyte is the Senior Director of Physician and Ambulatory IT Strategy at Catholic Healthcare West (CHW), a 41-hospital system in California, Arizona and Nevada. In his role, Mr. Whyte oversees IT strategy and advanced IT projects to serve physicians and patients in CHW’s communities. His role includes leading CHW’s IT planning for the ARRA, Health Care Reform and Health Information Exchanges. Prior to joining CHW in 2005, Mr. Whyte was Vice President and CIO at Phoenix Children’s Hospital and has spent over 17 years consulting with Ernst & Young, Siemens Medical Solutions and Capgemini to hospitals, health insurers and life sciences companies. He has spoken and worked nationally and internationally on topics including portals, health information exchanges and genomics. Mr. Whyte founded and served as Co-Chairman of the HL7 Clinical Genomics Special Interest Group that is working with a team of physicians, biopharmaceutical specialists, bioinformatics specialists and regulators to develop an international data exchange standard for genetic information. Mr. Whyte graduated from the University of Arizona magna cum laude with a B.S.B.A. in Management Information Systems and magna cum laude with a B.A. in Economics. Scott and his wife Elise have four children and reside in Paradise Valley, Arizona.