Rusty Yeager

Chief Information Officer & Senior Vice President, ENCOMPASS HEALTH CORP

Search every verified Rusty Yeager interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Rusty Yeager, Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer at Encompass Health, discussed the company's approach to EHR standardization and digital health initiatives in a September 2022 podcast. He stated that Encompass Health serves about 31% of Medicare inpatient rehabilitation patients across the United States, with approximately 4.2 billion in revenue and 203,000 patient discharges annually. Yeager noted that the organization uses a single database for its electronic medical record (EMR) and a centralized IT support organization serving about 33,000 employees. He said that because inpatient rehabilitation is highly specialized, the company cannot buy off-the-shelf systems and must configure technology to its specific workflows. Yeager described digitizing the referral process that previously relied on faxing and paper, building an app for clinical liaisons to capture data electronically before patient admission. He also mentioned developing an algorithm called REACT to reduce acute care transfers, which he said has positively impacted patient outcomes by potentially affecting thousands of patients annually. Yeager explained that Encompass Health chose Cerner for its standardized EHR rollout due to the vendor's experience in inpatient rehabilitation, and that the rollout across 98 hospitals was completed on schedule, on time, and on budget. He stated that the company paid for its EHR implementation without government money because it was considered necessary to support healthcare in the community. Yeager noted that the organization's aggressive growth strategy includes standardizing the EHR system in all new and joint venture hospitals. He also mentioned modernizing the patient revenue cycle system with a pilot of Cerner's revenue cycle system to improve integration and workflow. Yeager shared that one of the best pieces of career advice he received was to learn to ask for help, which he described as counterintuitive at the CIO level but essential for success.