The Connecticut Children’s Medical Center is preparing for a $20 million health IT overhaul that will re-wire its main campus and provide electronic health records to its specialty practices for the first time.
More importantly, the investment will allow the medical center to integrate all of its providers under one health IT system, so that patient data can be more easily transferred.
Plans include extending the data sharing capabilities to community physicians not employed by the hospital.
The effort, medical center officials say, will help enhance coordination of care by improving communication and access to patient data among all its physicians.
The investment also comes as the federal government pressures hospitals and other medical care providers to adopt electronic health record systems that meet certain “meaningful use” standards by 2015.
Institutions that comply with the mandate are eligible to receive temporary Medicare and Medicaid incentive payments. Hospitals that don’t comply, however, face payment penalties, raising the stakes and leaving providers little choice but to make the investment.
As a result, hospitals around Connecticut, and the country, are pouring tens of millions of dollars into improving health IT infrastructure to prepare for the brave new digital world of health care.
“A lot of what we are doing is related to achieving meaningful use of electronic health records,” said Kelly R. Styles, Connecticut Children’s vice president and chief information officer. “We want to ensure that as patients flow through the system, all physicians have the appropriate information to provide continuity of care.”
Styles said the medical center does already have various electronic health records systems in place, but not all of them can easily “talk to each other” or share information, which reduces their effectiveness, and would detract from their ability to meet the federal guidelines.
The $20 million investment will put the medical center, including its ambulatory, hospital and administrative services, under a single health IT system.
It will also expand EHR access to the medical center’s specialty groups, which include about 110 physicians located around the state who are employed by the hospital and provide various services ranging from cardiology to primary care.
It will be a significant change for the specialists in particular, Styles said, because they are still using paper-based records.
“This is a big step forward,” Styles said. “It will make it more efficient to coordinate care.”
Gerald J. Boisvert, executive vice president and chief financial officer at the Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, said the investment will be funded by a loan through the Connecticut Health and Educational Facilities Authority, which is the state’s quasi-public agency that issues tax-exempt bonds and loans on behalf of nonprofit institutions.
Bank of America will purchase the debt, which will have to be paid off over a seven period, Boisvert said.
Part of the funding will go toward new software and hardware as well as a new data center. Over time, the hospital will also need to add up to 60 staff members to help implement and run the system, Boisvert said.
The hospital has chosen Wisconsin-based Epic as its technology vendor.
And physicians won’t be the only ones using the system. All medical, clinical and even some administrative staff will be involved in using the technology, Boisvert said.
The goal is to also extend access to physicians in the community not employed by the hospital in order to create a health information exchange infrastructure, something that health care officials have been working to implement on a statewide basis for some time now.
Styles said the implementation, not including extending access to outside practitioners, is expected to take 36 to 42 months.
That would put the hospital on track to meet federal deadlines for achieving “meaningful use’’ of electronic health records technology. “Meaningful use” essentially means providers need to show they’re using certified records technology in ways that can be measured in quality and quantity. The term was coined in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which established incentives and disincentives for medical care providers to implement electronic health records.
Under the law, providers that are meaningful users are eligible to receive temporary Medicare and Medicaid incentive payments beginning as early as this year. Medicare payment penalties begin in 2015 for providers who fail to achieve meaningful use status.
There are several stages of meaningful use, each with different requirements like electronic prescribing, tracking key clinical quality measures, and sharing information with other providers’ electronically.
All of Connecticut’s 29 nonprofit hospitals have committed to adoption of the federal guidelines ahead of the 2015 deadline, according to the Connecticut Hospital Association.
A few hospitals declared their intention to achieve “meaningful use’’ by the end of this year. But there are challenges. In many cases, it can cost hospitals tens of millions of dollars to implement the infrastructure, and the federal government will not reimburse the full costs.
At Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, for example, officials expect to recoup up to $9 million from the federal government out of their $20 million investment.
The nationwide push to adopt electronic health records is being driven largely by the belief that the technology can improve the quality of care and save money for the entire health care system.
According to a 2005 study by the RAND HIT project, widespread adoption of electronic medical record systems could eventually save more than $81 billion annually by improving health care efficiency and safety. IT-enabled prevention and management of chronic disease could eventually double those savings while increasing health and other social benefits, the study said.