Spotlight: Children’s Hospitals and Clinics’ Bobbie Carroll

How the 2016 MPWHIT award winner is improving patient safety with informatics.


Health Data Management recently announced the honorees in its program to recognize the Most Powerful Women in Healthcare IT. All will be recognized at our event May 12 in Boston. In leading up to that event, HDM editors are highlighting some of the honorees—today, we feature Bobbie Carroll, who is senior director of patient safety and clinical informatics at Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota, based in the Twin Cities.

Name: Bobbie Carroll

Title: Senior Director of Patient Safety and Clinical Informatics

Organization: Children's Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota

Years in HIT: 22

Previous Positions:
  • Director, Professional Development, Practice and Informatics, Children's Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota, 2010-2012
  • Director, Clinical Informatics and Technology, Children’s Hospitals and Clinics of Minnesota, 2006-2010
  • Healthcare Consultant, Stone Bridge Consulting (Healthia), 2000-2002
  • Healthcare Consultant, SafeNet Consulting, 1996-2000

Current Job Responsibilities:
Carroll is responsible for the development strategic direction for system-wide efforts to continuously improve safety, effectiveness, efficiency, patient-centeredness, equity, and timeliness of healthcare services to all patients. Her leadership also includes facilitating system-wide learning on the part of all leaders, clinicians, and staff as well as integrating service excellence and professional standards within the organization. In her current role, she identifies opportunities to advance the use of technology at the bedside through integration of clinical practice, process and electronic medical records to name a few. She also identifies new technologies to improve clinical workflow and decision-making through clinical alerts, messaging and integrated decision support systems.

Primary Accomplishments:
  • Clinical integration work between the Children’s Hospital’s EHR and infusion pump vendors, resulting in the first pediatric hospital in the nation to have a truly full-loop bar code medication administration system. For this effort she was granted the Process/System Innovation Award from the Minnesota Alliance for Patient Safety.
  • Completion of several successful clinical implementations.
  • Recognized by the Intelligent Health Association with the Grand Award and for Improving the Patient Experience.
  • Honored with the Women in Health Care Leadership Award from the Trust
  • Management of various aspects of a multi-vendor implementation process within a hospital system, identifying various project plans, timelines and deliverables, integrating them into a master plan to concurrently implement systems effectively.
  • Management of clinical benchmarking systems for healthcare institutions across the nation, including client support, data management, issue resolution, developing and managing project plans and timelines; serving as a liaison for the client and outside vendors, on-site training and analytical review of facility specific data; and performing interface testing and data resolution.

Impact on HIT:
Carroll began her career as a registered nurse, providing clinical care in pediatrics, and in moving to informatics, evolved her focus and success to transforming bedside care through the use of technology. This evolution has played forward in her leadership to advance clinical informatics and technology in the clinical environment, as well as developing strategies for the future and then integrating both into daily operations that hold patient safety at its core.

Today, she leads her organization to achieve outstanding performance on key, nationally standardized metrics of quality and safety; most notably, establishing Children’s as the first pediatric hospital in the nation to have a truly full-loop bar code medication administration system. She also leads a comprehensive program to minimize patient harm through the implementation of systems that create a culture of safety; proactively identify risk; encourage adverse event reporting and thoughtful, learning orientated analysis of safety events and near misses.

Along the way, Carroll has been the model for collaboration on quality, safety and risk management as evidenced by her ability to work with various stakeholders to identify clinical opportunities that drive operational efficiencies and advance best practice at the bedside through evidence based guidelines, clinical standards and education.

By providing strategic leadership in system design, workflow analysis, and identification of opportunities for technology to support practice, Carroll has been able to align all stakeholders in partnership to define change management techniques and processes to encourage adoption of technology the result in improved patient outcomes.

IN HER OWN WORDS:
Management Philosophy:
Be accountable, be proud, and strive for top performance. Be good stewards of what has been given to you: financial responsibility, patient/family experience, employee engagement all contribute to an organization’s success.

Leadership Style:
I believe in providing opportunities and stretching individual capabilities to realize potential. Embracing a strong value system provides a foundation and grounding for core principles and expected behaviors. Our values are simple: kids first, listen, really listen, own outcomes, join together, and be remarkable. Creating an environment of trust and respect allows an organization to flourish with engaged staff that bring their very best selves to work every day.

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