Cerner CommunityWorks Foundations is a cost-effective, cloud-based EHR platform geared towards critical access and rural hospitals.
Cerner has launched a cloud-based EHR platform, CommunityWorks Foundations, aiming to reduce costs with a fixed-fee payment structure and no up-front fees at critical access (CAHs) and rural hospitals.
CommunityWorks Foundations scales Cerner Millennium EHR to accelerate EHR implementation to six months.
“Working with this segment of clients for more than a decade, we have evolved this cloud-based model to meet the various challenges community and rural health care organizations face,” Mitchell Clark, president of Cerner CommunityWorks, said in a statement.
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“CommunityWorks Foundations is the next evolution based on what we’ve learned from our more than 200 rural and critical access clients and the broader industry. It is built to help reduce financial barriers and better support communities that sometimes face challenges accessing the most innovative health care technology.”
Critical access and rural hospitals often face financial challenges due to geographic location, social determinants of health, diminishing resources, and employee shortages that negatively impact care quality and interoperability.
According to The National Rural Health Association, rural hospitals, which serve roughly 20 percent of Americans, have faced even greater financial difficulties during the pandemic, with half of these hospitals operating in the red prior to COVID-19.
Cerner said just both CommunityWorks and CommunityWorks Foundations clients leverage the vendor’s software that aims to improve patient and provider experience, as well as clinical and business outcomes.
Seventy percent of new clients after 180 days are beating baseline accounts receivable and those clients averaged a 5.5 percent improvement in that area, according to the vendor.
In late June, Cerner added seven rural hospitals to its CommunityWorks platform.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced the importance of having access to the right information at the right time in order to support providers as they work to save lives,” Clark said at the time of the announcement.
“The flexibility and scalability of this delivery model allows for use across community hospitals of varying sizes, making Cerner a right-fit for these clients and many others across the country.”
Seven rural hospitals fit the CommunityWorks criteria.
In an effort to enhance interoperability between its main hospital and four health clinics, Clay County Medical Center in Kansas tapped Cerner to upgrade and be a part of its CommunityWorks program. This connection aims to better patient care for both clinicians and patients.
In Washington, both Coulee Medical Center and Odessa Memorial Healthcare Center migrated to the cloud-based platform to improve patient care and improve interoperability.
Macon Community Hospital in Tennessee took part in Cerner’s first virtual EHR implementation, due to COVID-19. Stakeholders said this virtual EHR implementation worked seamlessly. Macon is now on the CommunityWorks platform because it allows the hospital to share patient information with similar health organizations, and even those that have experienced an influx of patients due to COVID-19.
In Louisiana, both Opelousas General Health System and Pike County Memorial Hospital tapped CommunityWorks to streamline health IT operations and increase interoperability between their respective facilities.
Finally, United Memorial Medical Center (UMMC) in Texas inked a deal with Cerner to implement CommunityWorks. UMMC will utilize this platform to connect its four hospitals and four clinics on one EHR platform. While the hospital has grown in size in recent years in the Houston area, Cerner’s interoperability enticed UMMC to implement its EHR system, the medical center said.
“We are very pleased to be working with these clients and look forward to providing the technology and solutions needed to drive increased efficiency and better outcomes for our clients in times of crisis and beyond,” Clark said.
Source: EHR Intelligence