DeWitt Medical facility from another location sets up cloud-based EHR that assists with COVID-19 care
DeWitt Medical facility is a crucial access hospital in DeWitt, Arkansas. It provides emergency and outpatient services for rural Southeastern Arkansas. The healthcare facility is geared up with a radiology department, a laboratory department, a respiratory department and an emergency room. It also operates a nursing home connected to the health center, the Ferguson Rural Health Center, and the local ambulance and paramedic services.
THE PROBLEM
When Brian Miller signed up with DeWitt Medical facility as CEO in January 2019, the health center’s existing EHR from CPSI was sunsetting and the facility had 9 months to discover a replacement. Miller and personnel knew they required a system that was light on maintenance, updates and assistance; had the ability to adapt to different workflows and care levels; and was supported by a team ready to be a partner to the health center, rather than simply another supplier.
” It also was truly essential for us that our new EHR would be interoperable and could link to the statewide SHARE health info exchange,” Miller explained. “We frequently move patients to other hospitals, and their medical information needs to move with them.
It is absolutely essential to connection of care that clinicians have simple access to their patients’ medical records, no matter where the client is originating from or where they have actually been treated in the past. By linking to the SHARE HIE, DeWitt personnel could access a combined longitudinal patient record, enabling clinicians and others in the state to make more informed choices and enhance the quality of care, Miller said.
PROPOSAL
For an EHR, DeWitt selected vendor Azalea Health. Azalea can be found in with a cloud-based system that minimized IT spend and raise, lowered the requirement for training and expensive consulting services, and used an interoperable approach that allowed DeWitt to connect to the SHARE HIE, while also linking its centers, so it might quickly share client information across its own network, Miller explained.
” The idea was easy: Azalea would provide a system that limited the quantity of in advance and long-lasting spend, empowered our hospital personnel to tailor the service based on their scientific workflow, and unlocked our data so that we could have a unified view of the patient regardless of the care setting,” he stated.
The transfer to a cloud-based EHR platform required a huge shift in frame of mind for DeWitt.
” We made the right choice to go with a cloud-based EHR that helped us pivot to satisfy brand-new needs for testing and tracking.”
Brian Miller, DeWitt Health Center
” We were coming from an on-premise system that demanded time and dollars to maintain,” Miller stated.
MARKET
There are numerous vendors with electronic health records systems on the health IT market today, consisting of Allscripts, athenahealth, Cerner, eClinicalWorks, Legendary, Greenway Health, HCS, Meditech and NextGen Health Care.
MEETING THE OBSTACLE
Right as DeWitt was moving from the integration stage of the EHR application into the assistance stages, COVID-19 hit.
” We were forced to complete the implementation from another location,” Miller stated. Azalea simplified the process and worked to ensure integration into our existing radiology and laboratory options.
DeWitt is part of the Arkansas Rural Health Collaboration (ARHP), a network of 14 rural hospitals that pools resources to better satisfy the special requirements of patients in their rural communities. When the pandemic started, Arkansas Blue Cross Blue Shield came to ARHP and supplied the funding to connect all the rural health centers in the collaboration to the SHARE program.
For DeWitt, Azalea contributed in facilitating its connection to the SHARE HIE. With the vendor’s aid, DeWitt turned into one of the very first suppliers in Southern Arkansas to be linked to the SHARE program.
” The SHARE program has actually led to more informed care transitions in between DeWitt and other regional neighborhood center suppliers,” Miller explained. “We use the exchange to share episodic admission/discharge/transfer information, discharge summaries, radiology reports, image narratives, laboratory outcomes, recommended medications and medical procedures. Our clinic gets 24- hour everyday reports on all our patients, and we get informed in genuine time when any client has an ED or inpatient discharge or if they evaluate positive for COVID-19”
OUTCOMES
Azalea also has supported DeWitt in evaluating the neighborhood for COVID-19 One day the healthcare facility had more than 100 tests, and that went on for about two weeks.
” What draws a lot of people is that they can get their test results in 15 minutes at our clinic rather of waiting a week,” Miller said.
Checking sets were reallocated by HHS in late July. DeWitt still is testing people who come into the medical facility.
” At its peak, the variety of individuals coming in to get tested was more than double our normal client volume,” Miller said. “With many brand-new individuals entering into our medical facility, Azalea’s EHR has actually been a valuable tool for keeping an eye on brand-new patients. Having this wider pool of patients in our records will be helpful for our recovery once we can increase optional procedures once again.”
SUGGESTIONS FOR OTHERS
” The landscape has actually changed to the point where it’s hard for smaller medical facilities to stand alone and survive,” Miller said. “Larger medical facilities have more access to funding and improve deals when acquiring equipment, but whatever costs more for important access health centers. We have actually been fortunate enough to take advantage of our connection with Jefferson Regional Medical Center in Pine Bluff to utilize their purchasing power and conserve a great deal of money on supplies.”
DeWitt is working to get the ARHP to a comparable place, where the health center can share resources in between the 14 healthcare facilities to protect grants, centralize staffing and obtain products at lower rates. Rural hospitals remain in a difficult place right now, and solidarity in between medical facilities might be the only method forward, Miller stated.
It’s likewise important to understand the various type of solutions that are out there, the advantages and threats to each, and scalability to future needs, he included.
” We never ever would have anticipated COVID-19 and the resulting impact that it had on our hospital operations and information,” he concluded.
Twitter: @SiwickiHealthIT
Email the author: bsiwicki@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.
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