Karen Hughart, MSN, BN-BC

Senior Director
Nursing Informatics

Karen Hughart MSN, BN-BC, is the Senior Director of Nursing Informatics at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. She has a joint report to the Chief Health Information Officer and Chief Executive Nursing Officer and is responsible for leading Nursing Informatics efforts across the organization. She has been a Nurse Leader for 40 years and has been in Informatics for over twenty years and during that time has headed up implementation efforts for several clinical information systems including Provider Order Entry, ADT, Planning and Managing Care, Electronic Medical Record. She has participated in and presented multiple regional and national conferences on the subject. She was one of 30 participants in a series of NLM grant-funded invitational conferences at University of Oregon Health Sciences that developed recommendations on implementation of Provider Order Entry Systems in response to the original Leap Frog recommendations. Joan Ash, the PI for this research, published the outcome of these efforts in a series of publications on CPOE and EHRs. She was part of the team that led in Nursing Documentation Standardization and Simplification efforts over the past several years.  Most recently, Karen led Nursing efforts in our big bang implementation of a new clinical information systems including Inpatient, Ambulatory, and Operative/Procedural Orders, Clinical Documentation, and EHR and multiple specialty applications that went live Nov. 2, 2017. She co-led efforts to implement new Governance and Support structures and processes that will provide a framework for optimization and enhancement of the new system. She is a member of the Clinical Directors Group that provides Clinical Informatics input into development of EHR. She is certified by the American Nurse Credentialing Center in Nursing Informatics. Her informatics interests include:

  • Use of standardized terminologies for Nursing Documentation (specific expertise with the ANA endorsed CCC terminology developed by Dr. Virginia Saba)
  • People and Process aspects of successful technology adoption and optimal utilization
  • Nursing documentation burden reduction