Hospitals, Health IT

Pioneering hospital CIO leader Richard Correll to retire

Richard A. Correll, who helped establish and promote the job of the healthcare CIO and who later co-founded the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) will retire June 30 after 42 years in the health IT industry.

Richard A. Correll, who helped establish and promote the job of the healthcare CIO and who later co-founded the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) will retire June 30 after 42 years in the health IT industry.

Correll, a former CHIME president, has held leadership positions with the organization since its 1992 creation, has served as CHIME’s COO and senior strategic advisor to current President Russell Branzell since 2013.

“With the indispensable support of our members, board and staff, the organization has become a recognized leader and advocate for the CIO role and the effective use of information management to improve patient care quality and safety,” Correll said in a statement released by CHIME.

“Our ability to utilize information technology to improve the quality, safety and efficiency of care has been significantly furthered because of the efforts of Rich Correll,” CHIME founding chairman John Glaser, now senior vice president of EHR vendor Cerner, said in the CHIME announcement. “Rich’s creation and leadership of CHIME have led to major advances in the knowledge, skills and capabilities of the healthcare IT leadership community. His legacy is substantial; we all have been shaped his work.”

Correll started at El Camino Hospital in Mountain View, Calif., in 1973, which had installed the world’s first hospital information system — a precursor EHR — starting eight years earlier. He worked under the late John E. Gall Jr., for whom CHIME’s CIO of the Year Award is named.

Correll later built and ran the management services department at Harper-Grace Hospitals in Detroit and served as president of consulting firm California Health Management Systems. In 1986, the American Hospital Association hired him as inaugural president of the Center for Health Information Management (CHIM). CHIM is responsible for the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) adding a vendor exhibition to its annual conference.

As a HIMSS board member in the late 1980s, Correll decided that those in the fast-growing ranks of healthcare CIOs needed a professional organization of their own, and CHIME was born a few years later.

“I’ve had the privilege of knowing and working with Rich since our days together at El Camino Hospital in the 1970s,” said Richard Rydell, CEO of the Association of Medical Directors of Information Systems (AMDIS). “He was a leader in the field of management systems and through his founding of CHIM, and later CHIME, he became a leader and influencer in information systems. I have always appreciated Rich’s dedication to improving patient care through the use of information technology.”

Correll and Glaser created the CHIME Foundation in 1994. In 2007, two years before passage of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, they spurred Ann Arbor, Mich.-based CHIME to open an office in Washington.

“Rich’s contributions and accomplishments throughout his entire career have been instrumental in establishing IT leadership in the healthcare industry,” Branzell said. “I’ve known Rich and have been involved with CHIME for over 17 years, and his vision and guidance have shaped the careers of countless industry CIOs. His presence will be greatly missed.”

 

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