By CereCore | Aug 1, 2025
3 minute read MEDITECH| EHR/EMR| Client Perspectives| IT Strategy
In her first nursing job, Dr. Kathy Tussey solved problems regardless of what walked through the emergency room doors. She thrived on helping people, and her leadership potential quickly became evident. Today, Dr. Tussey is the CEO at Harrison Memorial Hospital with three decades of nursing and leadership experience. She joined The CereCore Podcast and touched on everything from EHR optimization and how to help make sure your EHR is empowering staff—not burdening them—to the future of AI and rural healthcare.
Stream the full episode to hear how their strategic EHR roadmap works to improve patient safety, regulatory and revenue cycle concerns, why rural hospitals rely more heavily on technology and partnerships than their urban counterparts, and practical approaches to helping her team work smarter, not harder.
Dr. Tussey transitioned from a major hospital in Lexington, Ky. to a smaller community facility. While a “hospital is a hospital” when it comes to regulatory requirements, working in an independent community hospital felt different.
Providers and staff often treat neighbors, former teachers, and family friends. “Everybody they take care of they have been touched by in some way,” she said. “Either it was their schoolteacher or it's a friend of the family, or it's their family.”
She decided to focus on highlighting and celebrating the quality of care through data, which in turn would help staff understand the impact of their work. "They didn't have many ways to report their quality, data and patient experience, and so we've brought that to the forefront,” she explained.
The results speak volumes: the hospital has earned the prestigious Leapfrog A Patient Safety Grade for two consecutive terms, a testament to clinical excellence and culture.
The resources and support systems available at community hospitals can vary dramatically, prompting leaders like Dr. Tussey to pivot toward external partnerships with broader skillsets in order to elevate care delivery.
One of the most impactful moves, she says, was engaging CereCore to help optimize the hospital’s electronic health record (EHR) system.
“Over the last year with our CereCore team being here, we relied on them to help us optimize and identify better ways we can gain information and use that information for some challenges and processes,” Tussey explained. “It's a huge gift for us to be able to partner with them and see different ways other people are using the technology, and figure out how we can best use that here at Harrison Memorial.”
The collaboration began with a comprehensive assessment of the EHR system, revealing underutilized features and inefficiencies that were placing unnecessary burdens on staff. “Everyone had a piece of the puzzle,” she noted, “We needed to make sure the system was working for us and that we weren't working for the system.”
With CereCore’s guidance, Harrison Memorial developed a roadmap to streamline workflows and ensure the EHR supported quality, regulatory and revenue cycle goals. The result: improved data access, better decision-making, and a more empowered workforce.
For healthcare leaders, Dr. Tussey’s experience highlights the value of external perspectives in smaller healthcare settings.
"Your EHR is a tool,” she emphasized. "You need to be able to get the outcomes from the EHR you need, to be as successful as you can from a patient and safety and quality perspective. Of course, we are a business, so we do have to get paid because we have to keep the lights on.
“The assessment we had gave us a toolkit and a roadmap so we could see where it was critical to start, and then how else can we work to make things better and easier for the staff.
Dr. Tussey envisions artificial intelligence (AI) giving care providers time back with patients and relieving some of the tech-focused interactions that modern EHRs introduced.
“Statistics show that two extra minutes makes a huge impact on your patient,” she explained. From the vantage point of nurse and CEO, Dr. Tussey views AI not as a threat, but as a powerful tool that should be embraced as a partner in care delivery rather than resisted.
“To have that one little conversation that makes a patient feel better—if AI can help us do some of those things and get back to that piece—I'm really excited for what the future can bring for the EHR.”
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