Sneek Peek- IT’s Role in the Cherokee Tribe Health Care Expansion

Cherokee Tribe Receives Industry Award for Health Care Expansion Project
Includes 10 outpatient health centers; first tribe to partner with State university

Cherokee Nation, based in Tahlequah Oklahoma, operates the largest tribal health system in the country with more than 1.3 million patient visits per year and more than 345 million health transactions occurring in the EHR annually. The Cherokee Nation Health IT dept is led by Donnie Parish, CIO. Over the past two years, the Cherokee Nation Health IT department was heavily involved in planning, advising and seeing to fruition the largest tribal outpatient health facility in the nation, as a state of the art, high tech place for patients to receive health care. This facility has more than 240 exam rooms, two MRI machines, an ambulatory surgery center, 34 dental chairs and specialty health services not previously offered.