Cullman Regional Medical Center chose Riskonnect to support its vision for the future and its journey to become a high reliability organization (HRO).

If you stereotype Cullman, Alabama (pop. 15,385) as just another pit-stop on Interstate 65 between Huntsville and Birmingham, you’ll miss what Southern Living magazine called one of the best new southern food halls outside of Atlanta and Charleston, SC, a mecca for architectural historians and antique hunters alike and a local coffee house’s homage to Nirvana’s prematurely-demised frontman with a drink called the Kurt Kobean.

If you stereotype Cullman Regional Medical Center (144 beds) as just another county-owned, rural hospital, you’ll miss a sophisticated, growing health system, helmed by committed, strategic leaders with a great mix of big-system experience (including Tenet and Texas Health Resources) as well as local community understanding and appreciation.

You’ll find a Level III Trauma Center recognized for excellence by The Joint Commission, Blue Cross/Blue Shield and US News and World Report. You’ll find a strong recognition of the value and necessity of an integrated approach to Enterprise Risk Management.

You’ll also find Riskonnect.

In its own words, Cullman’s mission is to “improve the health of the community by providing excellent healthcare resources.” And in the minds of the organization, those resources extend beyond the new surgical robot and other clinical tools. It includes having the best operational, administrative and—yes— the best patient safety and risk management technology as well.

During its “exhaustive evaluation process”, Cullman saw solutions from multiple vendors that promised ease of configuration and pretty graphics, but a few things set Riskonnect apart from the others, according to Wendy Dunlap, MBA, Cullman Regional’s director of risk management and patient advocacy and its chief privacy and patient safety officer:

  • Integrated: A single, integrated platform that will allow Cullman to grow and evolve into an enterprise risk management model without having to add additional vendors. Cullman understands the irony of increasing vendor risk while trying to reducing enterprise risk, and they appreciate the efficiencies and data integration opportunities inherent in a single-vendor solution. They also like the fact that ASHRM’s ERM risk domains are already built in.
  • Scalable and Secure: Built on the force.com platform by Salesforce, which for Cullman means “flexibility, scalability and security.” It means a platform that will grow and evolve as Cullman does, without having to buy a new, more capable system or spend time and money on extensive—and expensive—software changes.
  • Comprehensive: A comprehensive solution and a pricing model that didn’t force Cullman to buy multiple, separate modules to get everything they wanted. Hospitals with a big vision still have budgets.
  • Breadth of Experience: Additionally, as Cullman works to become a High Reliability Organization (HRO), they’re looking forward to benefiting from the HRO journeys of Riskonnect’s clients in aviation, defense, energy and manufacturing as well as our peers in other health systems,” Dunlap said.

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.