CHI Memorial Hospital patients and providers will now be able to access their medical information on the Epic EHR and patient portal platform.
CHI Memorial Hospitals in Tennessee has completed its transition to an Epic Systems EHR following an 18-month, $67 million implementation.
On November 4, Epic went live at three of Memorial’s hospitals. All Memorial clinics and physicians’ offices will soon transition to Epic, too. Patients will now be able to access their health information on one single health record using the patient portal.
“Like many things in life, when you invest some good, upfront work and learning and studying and practicing, there’s a real payoff in the end,” said Memorial COO, Anthony Houston. “It’s an amazing record that allows us to do many things we couldn’t do before.”
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Using Epic EHR, providers can now access health records across 28 percent of hospitals across the country, including the nearby Erlanger Health System in Chattanooga. Roughly 40 percent of CHI hospitals currently use Epic, Houston said.
This EHR implementation will help increase care coordination, improve patient care, and enhance care across the health system. If a patient undergoes treatment at Memorial Hospital and subsequently visits a hospital that also uses Epic, the patients’ health information can be obtained.
With patient health information in one place, the software will save patients and hospitals money. It erases the chances of clinicians reordering lab results or tests that were already conducted.
Two years ago, Erlanger Health System underwent its Epic Systems implementation. Dave Peterson, Erlanger’s chief information officer, said the health system started seeing benefits right away.
“The data doesn’t lie. We can show you exactly what we did, what the recommendation was, what the outcomes were,” said Peterson.
“No matter what hospital [patients] go to, to provide the best health care possible they need to share that information,” continued Peterson. “At least now Memorial and Erlanger can work together for the better of the community.”
Although the system has only been live for two weeks, Dr. Kumar Murukurthy, Memorial’s chief medical informatics officer, said the transition is going smoothly.
“Throughout history there’s always going to be slow adopters — People that didn’t like the stethoscope, people that didn’t like electricity, people that didn’t like the internet, people that didn’t like email,” said Murukurthy. “But I don’t think we can live without any of those things right now. This is the same story.”
Memorial is a branch of CommonSpirit Health, the largest nonprofit health system based on revenue in the United States.
Implementing Epic EHR over the course of 18 months required roughly 60,000 hours of training across the health system, according to Houston. About 250 people from outside Chattanooga, including experts, consultants and trainers, aided the transition.
High-quality EHR training is key for physicians as hospitals and health systems work to address physician burnout, according to a recent KLAS survey of over 30,000 physicians.
The survey, which looked at the Net EHR Experience Score for physicians from 33 different specialties, found that physician satisfaction with their tools is highly variable.
The key factor, the respondents said, is the quality of initial training. The physicians that responded well and showed high satisfaction noted robust initial EHR training for their specialty.
Although specialty training can help lessen functionality issues in the EHR, some specialties do not have needed functionality in their EHR, even with training.
High-quality training and a strong relationship between the organization and the EHR vendor can improve the EHR experience. Organizations that train clinicians how to better use and personalize their EHR can help them gain more confidence using the EHR, leading to higher satisfaction.
Source: EHR Intelligence