Speakers

Dr. Lagrew is a maternal fetal medicine specialist and physician informaticist with a  special interest in maternal quality improvement.  After growing up in Lexington, Kentucky, where he completed his medical school and residency at the University of Kentucky.  He began computer programming as an undergraduate student and earned extra income during undergraduate and medical school.

He came to Southern California to complete his maternal-fetal medicine fellowship at Long Beach Memorial Medical Center and University of California, Irvine. Following the fellowship, Dr. Lagrew joined the faculty at University of Louisville before returning to become medical director at the just opened Saddleback Women’s Hospital in 1988, the first labor, delivery and recovery (LDRP) unit on the west coast where he helped developed techniques for providing obstetrical care via the collaborative practice model. The hospital was a pioneer effort for cesarean section reduction, emergent cesarean section drills, maternal quality improvement in techniques such as controlling unnecessary inductions and episiotomies.  He introduced an obstetrical database called OBStat that produced multiple statistical and quality reports to drive the innovation. He started the largest perinatal office in south Orange County and despite his busy administrative duties he has carried on a busy clinical practice of high risk pregnancies including the delivery of over 30 sets of triplets or quadruplets.

Dr. Lagrew currently is a member of the Executive Committees of the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative (CMQCC) and California Maternal Data Center. He co-chairs the CMQCC Hemorrhage and Intended Vaginal Birth Taskforces and co-edited the CMQCC Hemorrhage and Primary Cesarean Section reduction toolkits.  He participated on the national committees including the ACOG ReVitalize conference for obstetrical terms, AIM taskforce on obstetrical hemorrhage and co-chaired the AIM taskforce on primary cesarean reduction.

When the hospital adopted an early effort of electronic order entry he served as a physician champion. In 1996 he became the Medical Director for Informatics for the newly formed MemorialCare Physician Society, as part of MemorialCare Health System’s wide effort to adopt electronic medical records.  As part of the role he helped design the system-wide physician informatics governance and worked to ensure close development working relationships between build staff and clinicians.  Saddleback became the first hospital on the west coast to turn on the Epic Systems medical record system and Dr. Lagrew was the physician champion and chief of staff at the time.  In 2007 he assisted in providing expertise into the design of the Epic Obstetrical Module, Stork.   In 2010, he reduced his clinical practice and became the Chief Integration and Accountability Officer (CIAO) for MemorialCare and focuses on modern physician adoption of electronic records and other informatics disciplines.  In all he has been part of six hospital go-lives and multiple office/clinical go-lives with the Epic record.  He has given many regional and national presentations on physician adoption of electronic records and the use of clinical data extracted from medical records.

In 2013, he was appointed by the executive committee of the Society of Maternal Fetal Medicine to Chair a special taskforce involving the major obstetrical provider groups on the Maternal Health Information Initiative to help achieve consensus on information needs going forward.  He has worked on numerous national perinatal quality initiatives with focuses on cesarean section rates, maternal hemorrhage and elective deliveries working with organizations like IHI, ACOG, SMFM, and CMQCC.  Dr. Lagrew is the President Elect of the Pacific Coast Obstetrical and Gynecological Society.  He co-chairs the AIM Safety Bundle taskforce on increasing chances for intended vaginal deliveries and CMQCC Toolkit development for the same subject.  He holds triple board certification in Obstetrics/Gynecology, Maternal Fetal Medicine and Clinical Informatics.  In addition to these administrative and leadership roles he continues to active in authoring numerous peer reviewed publications and book chapters.

In October of 2016 he accepted the position of Executive Medical Director of Women’s Service for the St. Joseph-Hoag Health region of Providence Healthcare.  He has been charged with developing the individual Ministries Clinical Institutes and systematizing Women’s Health.