Dr. Richard Vaughn
Corporate Vice President - Clinical Decision Support
SSM Healthcare

SSM Health Care has named Richard Vaughn, M.D., corporate vice president-clinical decision support. Vaughn will assume his new position on January 2, 2008.

In addition to his current role as Medical Director of Project Beacon, Dr. Vaughn will assist SSM clinicians in defining, implementing and optimizing a common platform of care for the system, which includes common order sets, reports and alerts that can be used at all SSM facilities. The clinical decision support department’s core function will be to help clinicians improve patient outcomes by using evidence-based medicine. Dr. Vaughn’s first year in his new role will be dedicated to the support and implementation of the EHR at SSM hospitals and ambulatory clinics. In this new role, he will continue to work out of his office at Integrated Health Technologies. The department will support the efforts of SSM’s Strategic Development and Dr. Vaughn will report to Bill Thompson, SSM senior vice president, strategic development.

In his 14 years with SSM Health Care, Dr. Vaughn has demonstrated tremendous leadership and passion for his work, and he has been instrumental in the strategy, planning, development and implementation of Project Beacon. Dr. Vaughn became the medical director of Project Beacon in 2006 after transitioning out of his medical practice at SSM St. Charles (Mo.) Clinic Medical Group. He facilitated the EHR vendor selection process, serves as physician champion and leads the development of entity physician champions. He has been involved with EHR since 1999 and serves as chair of the SSM Medical Informatics Committee.

Prior to joining SSM Health Care, Dr. Vaughn received his doctorate in medicine degree from the University of Missouri, Columbia School of Medicine and completed his residency at Vanderbilt University Medical Center where he was named chief resident. He holds a Master of Information Systems from the University of Missouri – St. Louis and recently completed the American Informatics Association 10x10 medical informatics training program.