Richard Vaughn MD
Corporate Vice President – Clinical Decision Support
Medical Director Project Beacon
Richard Vaughn, M.D., is the Corporate Vice President – Clinical Decision Support at SSM
Health Care and the Medical Director for Project Beacon, SSM’s electronic health record
implementation.
Dr. Vaughn is responsible for defining, implementing and optimizing a common platform of care
for SSM via the electronic health record (EHR). This includes order sets, reports,
documentation tools and advanced decision support alerts that can be used at all SSM facilities
as well as the clinical governance required to support the implementation. The corporate Clinical
Decision Support department, with 4 clinical analysts and a pharmacist, was created with the
intent of improving patient outcomes by using evidence-based medicine and creating,
maintaining and optimizing advanced decision support in the SSM EHR. SSM has now fully
implemented a HIMSS level 6 EHR at 8 hospital locations in 2 states and at over 65 outpatient
multispecialty locations.
In his 15 years with SSM Health Care, Dr. Vaughn has demonstrated tremendous leadership
and passion for his work. 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 Internal 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 SSM’s
EHR planning since 1999. He is the chair of the SSM Medical Informatics Committee.
Prior to joining SSM Health Care, Dr. Vaughn received his MD degree from the University of
Missouri, Columbia School of Medicine and completed his residency in Internal Medicine at
Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He and completed the American Informatics Association
10x10 medical informatics training program and holds a Master of Information Systems degree
from the University of Missouri – St. Louis.
477 N. Lindbergh Blvd.
St. Louis, MO 63141-7832
www.ssmhc.com
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(314) 994 7900 fax