Memorial Health Systems

IT Project: Memorial Health System

Overview

        Memorial Health System is a large provider of comprehensive health care services in northern Massachusetts.  It operates a 330 bed acute care facility, Memorial Hospital. Within the hospital, there is an emergency department, a Heart Institute, a cardiac rehabilitation center, imaging, pharmacy and many other inpatient services.  In addition, the health system operates a variety of outpatient services.  It has a physician network of nine physician practices at nine separate locations employing a total of 49 primary care physicians today with plans to expand to 55 by end of the year.  It offers two urgent care facilities in the community for less severe treatments, a one-day surgical center, laboratory service center, and a wellness center.

The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act, part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 has offered incentives to Medicare and Medicaid eligible professionals and hospitals to switch to electronic health records (EHRs).  The program requires all providers to demonstrate meaningful use of EHRs by 2014. At this time Memorial Hospital and its physicians have not embarked on implementing EHRs within their facilities. Nationally less than 50% of providers have actually implemented EHRs thus far.  Electronic health records are patient- centered records that include medical history, diagnoses, medications, immunization dates, allergies, radiology images, lab tests and results, insurance information and demographics.  The project will be to convert hard copy health records to electronic health records within the hospital and at the physician practices initially with the intent to expand to the other inpatient areas and to outpatient services facilities.                                Hospitals and physicians are facing reduced reimbursement of services for Medicare and Medicaid patients.  There is also been a shift from inpatient services to outpatient services due to decreases by insurance companies for payment of services.  A new system is required to meet mandates but more so because patient information is not integrated electronically throughout the hospital and definitely not throughout the health care system. Each department and physician practice facility had a separate client/server environment. Hospital admission creates an electronic patient record with very basic patient information involving this specific admission only.  It is not integrated in the various hospital departments, but is only used for nurses and doctors to place their notes.  Primary care physician practices were acquired or set up by the hospital but all patient records are paper records held at each individual location.  Each physician practice has their own computer system that is primarily used for scheduling patient visits. The various departments within the hospital create patient information when a patient seeks services within the hospital and the main application is for admission/discharge and for patient scheduling in that specific department. Each department keeps its own database with patient records that is primarily used for scheduling and billing. Outpatient services also keep their own patient records at their facilities.  There needs to be an integrated system that has an electronic health record for each patient serviced within the health system.  The initial project will focus at creating EHRs for all patients admitted to the hospital as well as each patient seen at the physician practices. EHRs will then be integrated to all areas within the health system for all inpatient and outpatient services.  The EHR automates access to the patient information throughout the health system.