Saint Francis beginning $43M electronic records initiative

Months of study and the involvement of more than 400 employees have led Saint Francis Medical Center into the beginnings of a $43 million project that will integrate electronic medical records across the entire health-care system.

Epic, a Wisconsin-based vendor, recently was selected to provide the technology products Saint Francis executives said will create an "all-in-one" system for the medical center's patient records and increase patient access to their own information.

The initiative covering the creation of the new system will start in March when some medical center staff will begin to prepare for implementation. It comes at a time when the Saint Francis system, and thousands around the country like it, are trying to comply with requirements of the Affordable Care Act -- some of which are only possible with an updated, integrated platform, said Saint Francis' chief information officer Edward Duryee, who directs information systems strategy and operations.

Support of Saint Francis-affiliated physicians for an integrated platform also helped guide the decision, and 430 employees -- including 100 doctors -- gave the medical center input on selecting a vendor.

As it stands, the medical center's recordmaking and recordkeeping technology needs upgrades and a better way to share information about patients, especially in an example where a patient may visit his or her doctor, then later admitted to the hospital or otherwise have a transfer of treatment within the system, said Laura Dumey, clinical director of surgical and critical care services at Saint Francis.

With a newly integrated system, "we're all working from the same record," Dumey said. "That's been an aggravation factor, I believe, for patients. They'll say, 'I've already told two people this information.' This should negate that."

The same sharing and access of information by medical service providers would hold true for a patient discharged from the hospital who might later need a service such as physical therapy or a follow-up appointment with his or her doctor, Dumey said.

Implementing the new system will take a little more than a year, with it set to go live in July 2016.

Duryee said using the new system should virtually eliminate scenarios in which patients using physician services in different settings are carrying their medical information from place to place or just trying to remember and repeat all the recorded information they should share with their doctors.

"In our case, we have different settings that were purchased because they were the best for a certain individual area, but didn't talk or interface to other areas," Duryee said. "This makes one platform to go across all areas."

Saint Francis' emergency department and medical partners now, for example, have different information systems.

With the new system, patients also will have access to a web portal and application called MyChart, which allows them to access records, send messages to doctors and manage appointments. Instant exchange of patient information with other large health systems that use Epic, such as SSM Health, Mercy Health and St. Anthony's that have a major presence in the St. Louis area, will be possible with the upgrade at Saint Francis.

"That's important," Duryee said, "but it's really within the walls of the Saint Francis system that we want all things connected."

Regionally, medical records of all Saint Francis patients, whether they seek treatment in outlying areas such as Farmington or Poplar Bluff, Missouri, where there are Saint Francis medical partners, all will be in the new system.

The Epic company is becoming widely used by large health-care systems, according to recent media reports of contracts between the company and health-care systems. On its website, the company describes its software as "developed in-house" and sharing "a single patient-centric database."

The company also says on its website it securely exchanged 6.3 million patient records on its network in October.

Other patient-focused benefits Saint Francis representatives say may become available through the system upgrades are the potential for patients to make same-day appointments. Other scheduling, billing and registration improvements are expected.

Saint Francis' marketing department also outlined "internal and external reasons" for the move to an integrated electronic medical records system.

Those reasons include growth of the Saint Francis campus, which has quadrupled in the past 15 years and has expanded regionally; that physician leaders "want one integrated [electronic medical record system] in the future; and that meeting government-set criteria will mean financial incentives become available and there will be financial penalties if criteria are not met.

Patient care benefits, according to the marketing department, will include "increased efficiency, improved consistency of care, better outcomes and reduction in potential side effects/errors in treatment."

The project also is expected to create 70 jobs at the medical center, say executives and the marketing department, 35 of which will be new jobs. Saint Francis will first consider current employees for jobs that are being created to help implement and run the new system, and then conduct an external search.

eragan@semissourian.com

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