Getting To Know: Marcus Speaker, M.D.

What is a typical day like in your job and what are the responsibilities of your role?
In health care technology, a typical day is filled with extraordinary variety. I have the opportunity to collaborate with multiple teams throughout each day. 

For the past two years, I have been engaged with Horizon, a program to help improve our Epic electronic health record (EHR).  While work on foundational changes to the EHR has been the focus, we have dealt with other high-priority issues. We have partnered with our clinical and operational colleagues to improve sepsis and insulin use as well as deal with COVID-19.

Additionally, each week, I produce a short video called TechTips, highlighting one Epic tip to improve user efficiency. The EHR is a source of frustration for many users, and we are continuously working to make it better.

What was a memorable day at work?
Perhaps my most memorable day was back in 2004, and it happened to be the last clinical day of my residency. On this day, I felt like the epitome of a family physician. I started the day by caring for my continuity patients that were at CRMH, including one patient that I had followed through her pregnancy who was now in labor. I saw patients that morning during clinic and over lunch was able to slip back over to CRMH to deliver the baby, then still see patients that afternoon. I felt like I was ready to spread my wings and fly.

Perhaps the biggest project that I have been part of at Carilion Clinic is the introduction of the Epic EHR. As part of the implementation, I worked to convert our previous medical record into Epic. At that time nobody had taken on this task. The goal of the conversion was to give our providers the ability to see previous notes without needing to flip back and forth between systems, providing efficiency during that difficult transition between systems. We converted almost a million patient notes and several million progress notes, not to mention every prescription written for close to 12 years.

How does your work support our mission?
The work we do in clinical informatics has impacts on our communities both directly and indirectly. By maintaining the EHR content and functionality, we give providers the tools they need to care for our patients in the hospital and in the ambulatory practices. With reminders for important services and alerts for allergies and medication interactions, we strive to keep our patients healthy and safe. Additionally, we take the well-being of our users very seriously. With burnout and stress on the rise, we work hard to make the systems as easy to use and efficient as we can. Sometimes the rules and regulations make this difficult, but we are always thinking about our user’s well-being.

How do you and your team collaborate with others in our organization?
Clinical informatics has a high degree of collaboration—that’s what we do. We help translate the clinical needs of patients and users into user stories and requests. We then work hand-in-hand with TSG and E&OD. This partnership is so tight that we refer to it as the “three-legged stool”; If you remove one leg of the stool, it will fall over. When we bring in clinical operations, the stool gains a fourth leg and becomes even more stable. That’s the beauty of collaboration in the health technology space; if you have informatics, IT, training and operations working together, we can accomplish anything.  

What is something your colleagues would be surprised to know about you or your work? 
I have a love of the outdoors and have been heavily involved in Scouts USA, formerly the Boy Scouts. As a scoutmaster, I mentored a group of scouts from kindergarten to high school seniors with seven of the nine becoming Eagle Scouts. We spent many weeks at summer camp, volunteering at the National and World Scout Jamboree. It’s a great experience, knowing that I had a part in shaping tomorrow’s leaders.