TriStar Centennial CMO Focused on Improvement through Partnership
When she was working for the Veterans Administration, fellow physicians used to teasingly call Divya Shroff “Dr. Blackberry.”
In the days when portable technology was new to the halls of medicine, Shroff was constantly looking for ways this tool could be used to help her patients. Early on, she knew her way around the groundbreaking, and ubiquitous, little black device and recognized its potential for improving the practice of medicine.
“I’ve always been action-oriented, and I wanted to be a conduit to explain to the tech people how devices could be most useful. I guess I wanted to explain why the fonts on the screen needed to be green,” she recalled.
Shroff’s reputation as an innovative leader in medicine and clinical change management has only grown during her tenure with two of the country’s largest healthcare systems — the Veterans Health Administration and Nashville-based Hospital Corporation of America. Last December, HCA announced Shroff had been appointed chief medical officer for TriStar Centennial Medical Center, the company’s 657-bed flagship facility in Nashville.
Prior to joining HCA, Shroff served as associate chief of staff for Informatics at the Washington, D.C. Veterans Affairs Medical Center. There, she played a pivotal role in the development of projects that gained national recognition, such as Blackberry EKG transmission for off-site cardiologists, an electronic providers hand-off tool, and inpatient interactive bedside televisions that could communicate with the hospital’s electronic medical records system. “I was so proud to work for an organization that was literally on the cutting edge of technology and medicine,” she said.
When she was offered a new position as chief clinical transformation officer and vice president in the Clinical Services Group for HCA in Nashville, she laughed and asked, “What’s the job description?”
Her role at HCA was designed to support the development and innovation of the clinical merger of technology and healthcare. She had responsibility for the clinical implementation of the electronic health record system across the HCA enterprise, clinical leadership for mobile health technology development and telehealth deployment for patient and provider engagements and improved clinical workflow, as well as other projects to facilitate communication and collaboration among physicians.
Shroff executed and extended the strategic employment of a physician leadership program into 70 HCA hospitals, resulting in the successful utilization of Meditech’s EMR, and along the way, created a website in use by 11,000 clinicians today. Additionally, she focused on improving the physician experience with patient care and technology by placing an emphasis on how mobility could transform care delivery and clinical workflow.
Her depth of technological skills, knowledge and experience should stand her in good stead as CMO where she is playing a significant role in improving quality and patient outcomes in partnership with the hospital team. She is responsible for overseeing medical affairs and providing leadership to the more than 1,000 physicians on staff.
Shroff brings experience as a physician executive with strategic vision in healthcare to her new position. Her skill set includes understanding trends regarding healthcare reform, quality, safety and physician/provider engagement and employing technology to harness innovative solutions. She also brought with her a treasure trove of insight into geographic variations, market diversities, and multiple lines of business operations.
Known as a leader in social media and mobile health technology development for patient and provider engagement and clinical workflow, she has intimate knowledge of multiple EHR systems, which focus on driving implementation optimization and future functionality development across complex patient care models and transitions in care.
In announcing her appointment last fall, TriStar Centennial President and CEO Heather Rohan said, “Her leadership and ability to engage providers utilizing innovation and technology to transform quality and access to patient care will be a tremendous asset to TriStar Centennial.”
Shroff said she is excited about the direction that medicine is taking in terms of technology, and she anticipates data collection will enable physicians to move more confidently into population health. “It’s fascinating that we will be able to collect data and show patients how to use the information to improve their health,” she said.
Shroff has been published in a variety of scientific journals and recognized in publications like TIME Magazine, The Washington Post and CIO Magazine. But long before she was a nationally recognized physician and health informatics leader, Shroff was a curious, bright child growing up in Chicago. Her family moved to Illinois from India to work with Abbott Labs in the late 1960s. She lived in her family’s native country when she was in the fourth grade before returning to the United States for the rest of her education.
Always interested in science, Shroff said, “Sally Ride was my childhood hero. I wanted to be just like her.”
In college, she participated in a six-year, integrated BA/MD program and graduated with a degree in biology with a minor in Spanish, as well as her medical degree, from the University of Missouri – Kansas City School of Medicine. Shroff completed her residency in Internal Medicine at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.
The board certified internist is a Fellow of Hospital Medicine and a member of the American Medical Informatics Association. She created physician leadership curricula and physician engagement/alignment strategies in matrix organizations utilizing cross discipline teams for the successful operational and clinical best practice outcomes.
In the community and beyond, she also has taken on the role of active volunteer. Shroff sits on a number of local boards including the Nashville Adventure Science Center and Nashville Public Radio WPLN Community Advisors and serves as a chapter director for TN HIMSS. She also has participated in medical mission work through the Dominican Republic Primary Care Clinic Volunteer MD program.
Recently, she assumed another new role — that of bride and now newlywed as she celebrated her marriage to music label executive Matthew Hargis in a festive destination wedding this spring. Always a great communicator, Shroff designed a special logo for their wedding invitations, combining a medical caduceus with a cleft note.
“We’ve got Nashville covered … music and medicine,” she said with a laugh.