Saint Francis ready to roll out electronic medical records system July 1

Editor's note: The following story has been edited to correct a name.

After more than a year of preparation and training, Saint Francis Healthcare System soon will go live with its new, $43 million electronic medical-records system.

Hospitalist and physician champion Matthew Shepard is counting down the days to the July 1 launch date.

“I’m always thinking, ‘How many more days until Epic?’ Because it is that much better than [our current system],” he said.

Epic, a Wisconsin-based vendor, was chosen to provide the technology products that will streamline the dissemination of patient information throughout the Saint Francis Healthcare System. The improved connectivity will help the health-care system comply with the Affordable Care Act. It will open lines of communication between health providers, and patients records will be more readily available, reducing the chance of patients having to repeat their information.

The Epic system also will lessen the time physicians spend writing notes and orders and increase their time available for direct patient contact.

“It’s one of the issues we have in health care in general. While computer systems allow us to collect data, they’ve somewhat taken away from our ability to take care of patients, because there are a lot of things that we have to do in systems to be able to do that,” Shepard said. “This system allows us to get some more time back with the patient.”

The new system facilitates the flow of information among Saint Francis-affiliated offices, allowing physicians to see the medications prescribed and procedures done on a patient rather than relying on the patient to remember and report his or her medical history.

Once information is put into the system, it is accessible to any health-care provider authorized in the system.

“Patients tend to forget about their medical problems,” Thomas Diemer, Saint Francis Healthcare System vice president of quality and patient safety said. “All of that is going to be right at the fingertips of the ED director.”

Epic is used by more than 300 hospitals around the country, including most in St. Louis, Maryann Reese, executive vice president and chief operating officer of Saint Francis Healthcare Systems, said. This means Saint Francis can maintain lines of communication with the treating hospital when a patient is transferred north. The patient’s doctor could track the patients’ progress.

“It allows you to manage your patients from where you are,” Diemer said.

Doctors can access the system from anywhere, which means in an emergency such as a stroke, the physician can access the patients’ full records and vital signs and make a call with full knowledge of the situation in minutes, Reese said.

“That’s saving brain,” she said.

The system brings together the parts of the system that traditionally have been separate, officials say. A pharmacist may focus on certain aspects of a patient’s health. A nurse collecting vital signs focuses on another. The Epic system takes all of this information, looks at the patient as a whole and identifies potential issues before they may be evident, Diemer said.

“It’s looking for a problem before a problem is clinically evident,” Diemer said.

“It’s very intuitive and smart. It can actually notify nurses and physicians when there’s a potential problem. It has the capacity to do that,” Reese said.

And the system has the potential for more improvement down the line, Reese said.

“We also get to optimize it. We get what we build, and then there will be lifelong optimization to make it even smarter and better,” she said.

The fact the system is used by hundreds of hospitals means the system has been proven and improved, Shepard said. He said Saint Francis is standing on the shoulders of great organizations such as Johns Hopkins and Stanford that use the system.

The Saint Francis staff has done extensive training and recently completed trial runs, using a teddy bear through a variety of departments and procedures.

The Saint Francis Healthcare System also is anticipating the launch of MyChart two weeks later, which allows patients to access their medical records, view lab results, manage appointments and message their doctors. Proxy access to this information can be made available to a patient’s family member if the patient grants such permission.

“I can go in and see what my blood pressure was the last time I saw my physician, which is really helpful,” Barbara Thompson, Saint Francis Healthcare System’s vice president of marketing and foundation, said.

If a patient forgets a detail of the doctor’s orders, the patient can access the information through a password-protected account.

“As a patient, I can leave the doctor’s office and I can be pretty sure what he said, but I don’t remember: ‘Am I supposed to do this twice a day? Three times a day? Once a week?’ I can go into MyChart: It’s all there,” Thompson said.

Patients unsure about using the program can call for help.

Officials said though MyChart is easy to access and Epic information flows smoothly throughout the hospital and affiliated offices, privacy is a priority.

Billing will be a more consolidated process, with online payment options available through a third-party service.

The introduction, training and impending implementation of Epic and MyChart has brought Epic staff into the region, putting in 6,800 hours of training.

“It’s very impactful to the economy,” Felecia Blanton, director of marketing, said. “We have 6,800 days of people staying in hotels, eating in restaurants. It’s a huge involvement.”

Seventy-eight permanent and full-time jobs were created. In the hospital system, 29 new positions were added to the revenue cycle, Reese said, and 49 were added to the IT cycle.

“This is the largest and most exciting project Saint Francis has done, outside of construction. We’re a little bit nervous about flipping the switch, but we also know we are going to bring the best care that we can to our patients, and we’re going to make our physicians and clinicians more successful because of it,” Reese said. “We’re very excited to bring this level of care to our region.”

bbrown@semissourian.com

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