In her 20 years of nursing experience, Miki gained vast experience and wisdom, working in over 100 facilities as a traveler, a volunteer, permanent staff, and a consultant – including experience with Cerner clients. That vast experience, passion, and commitment to continuous improvement accompanied her through the doors of Cerner.

She is especially gifted in identifying opportunities for improvement and developing and implementing tools that increase efficiencies and outcomes – not only for the patients and clients served, but also for Cerner IT associates, for example: When the Adult Intake Essential Clinical Dataset (ECD) work came, Miki saw an opportunity to optimize the nursing workflow even further.  She created a method to bring the entire workflow out of AdHoc forms into the workflow mPage utilizing a checklist view to quickly show the nurses which items have and have not been addressed yet by presenting only those relevant items that have not yet been addressed.  This resulted in increased patient satisfaction as it minimized redundant questions in the emergency department and the inpatient units.  Efficiencies for nursing staff were increased, regulatory criteria were more effectively met, and nurses felt they had been heard. 

Miki worked closely with the engineers who programmed the tool, ensuring the backbone of the code would be based on existing structures. This allows change requests to the intake process to be performed predominantly within existing tools and not require programming changes to the raw code. The fact that Miki was allowed the freedom to move forward with this idea is a prime example of the respect that the client and her leaders have for Miki and her abilities.  She pitched the idea and immediately received the go-ahead.

A perpetual learner, Miki taught herself javaScript and hand-coded a dynamic Maternal-Fetal Triage Index tool. She hopes to take it to the next level and have it automatically grab data from patient charts to show our clinicians an incoming patient’s suggested triage level, while supplying them face-up with the next steps. This would also include links to supporting documentation in easily digestible formats. 

As part of Care Redesign initiatives, Miki created a clinical-decision-support tool for c. diff testing out of AdHoc forms, SmartZone alerts, and Discern rules. This helps reduce the amount of unnecessary testing for c diff at her client’s sites – saving time and money for her clients and promoting early recognition and management of c. diff infection.

Miki created a technique to more closely standardize subjective blood loss in labor and delivery. This increases the accuracy of the data and reduces the guesswork for postpartum hemorrhage risk prediction.

When the client implemented an in-home inpatient model to help alleviate the burden of Covid 19 on their approximately 20 hospital system, Miki spearheaded and built out the entire nursing workflow in three days, starting from initial workflow discussions to live functionality.

These are but a few examples of the way Miki has improved processes for Cerner’s clients and others.  She is the person you call when you have a problem you can’t solve or when you’ve been told that the system isn’t capable of doing something.  She is almost always able to find a way to make it happen.  She continues to amaze me with her knowledge, passion, creativity, technical expertise, and drive. She is a well-recognized and valuable resource for Cerner ITWorks colleagues and the client, diving in to help and/or offer support whenever she can. In addition to all that she brings to Cerner, Miki is now the manager of 7 associates, 6 of whom are also nurses. As one of those nurses, I am incredibly blessed for the support, wisdom, and guidance she provides. She is truly a DAISY Nurse.