Rick Flores, Director of Clinical Informatics and Compliance Officer, Dimmit Regional Hospital, Carrizo Springs
My name is Luis Ricardo Flores, BS-CLS, MHS-HA but all of my peers refer to me as Rick, I am the Director of Clinical Informatics and the Compliance Officer at Dimmit Regional Hospital in Carrizo Springs, TX.
I started my college career in 2004 at Laredo Community College in Laredo, TX. I graduated LCC in 2007 with an Associates of Applied Science in Medical Laboratory Technology, in July of 2007 I became a nationally certified Medical Laboratory Technologist (MLT ASCP) by the American Society for Clinical Pathology. I continued my undergraduate education in 2009 at The University of Texas Pan-American (UTPA, now UTRGV) and graduated in 2010 with a Bachelor’s of Science in Clinical Laboratory Science. In 2019 I obtained a Masters degree in Health Science in Healthcare Administration.
In March of 2011 I started working at Laredo Medical Center as a Medical Technologist. I started as a Medical Technologist and in 2013 I was promoted to weekend supervisor. I remained at Laredo Medical Center for over 8 years where I honed my skills in the laboratory and leadership. In July of 2019 I was hired as a Laboratory Administrative Director at Dimmit Regional hospital, position I held for 2 years.
During my tenure as Laboratory Administrative Director at Dimmit Regional Hospital, I helped my laboratory team revamp policies and procedures, creating workflows that made sense for our laboratory, we modernized the laboratory with state-of-the-art equipment and achieved cost savings by doing so. We extended our laboratory services outside of our hospital to clinics, nursing homes and private practices, increasing availability of healthcare to our residents.
In October of 2021 I was promoted to Director of Clinical Informatics and Compliance Officer at Dimmit Regional Hospital, and through data analytics processes we have been able to identify and recapture revenue that had not been previously captured. In November of 2021 we established our Electronic Health Record Steering Committee, a committee designed to identify and fix issues with our EHR, and eventually replace our EHR. In February 2022 through April 2022 our hospital experienced demos from 4 different EHR vendors and in October of 2022 our committee decided to replace our EHR.
In December of 2021 a partner facility reached out to our CEO, with a request of contracting me as a laboratory consultant to help their newly minted laboratory administrative director, and I have been working with them since, guiding them through a successful laboratory survey.