Small Montana hospital picks Athenahealth as upgrades EHR

Roosevelt Medical Center, a 33-bed critical access hospital in Culbertson, Mont., is replacing an old health IT system with the Athenahealth electronic health record.

The move is expected to enable more advanced patient care delivery across the clinic, outpatient services and the hospital.

The organization expects the new EHR to better streamline patient diagnosis, treatment plan administration and management. Patients now will have access to a patient portal for online appointment scheduling, secure messaging with providers, test results and improved billing processes.

“This is all about delivering better healthcare by embracing technology and the convenience it can provide our patients,” says Brian Fordyce, information technology director.

With the new EHR, patients must validate the accuracy of their contact, insurance and other vital information within the EHR, and when coming to the hospital or physician office bring a current driver’s license, insurance card, medications and cell or home phone numbers to maximize communication with the medical center, which also has processes enabling patients to make and confirm appointments via their smartphone.

Roosevelt Medical made the EHR switch after its legacy vendor would no longer update software and interfaces. “With all of the requirements for documentation, it seemed to be a good time to make a total system change to meet our needs while also providing better service to patients,” adds Audrey Stromberg, CEO.

Here are other health IT contract wins and go-lives announced this past week.

• Meadows Health, a rural health system in Vidalia, Ga., has gone live on a patient experience platform from Jellyfish Health. As part of the implementation, Jellyfish worked with Meditech, the electronic health record vendor for Meadows Health. Now, patient information is automatically and securely transmitted to the EHR, enabling a consistent, seamless and efficient experience for staff and patients. Early benefits include text message updates and confirmations to reduce no-shows, registration wait times and workflows. Electronic documents and forms are completed and collected before patients arrive, and automatically appear back in the EHR.

• Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC), will implement the medication management platform of Omnicell to support their sterile compounding operations in the central pharmacy, and will add additional automated dispensing cabinets in patient care areas. In MUSC’s new children’s and women’s facility, the health system will upgrade to the vendor’s XT Series automated dispensing cabinets to increase medication accountability and patient safety.

• The Orthopaedic Surgery Center in Boardman, Ohio, has selected the HSTpathways cloud platform to handle practice management and electronic charting software to streamline operations, improve workflows and facilitate reporting and decision-making across the enterprise. The surgery center is an independent physician-owned, multi-specialty facility, but as demand for outpatient procedures grows, the center is building a new home that is expected to open in November. “Designed to support enterprise level management, HST will help us to make better decisions around standardizing supply lists across our facilities, with physician preference cards, payer contracts and fee schedule updates,” says Taylor Cera, administrator at the surgery center.

• Consultate Health Care in Maitland, Fla., a national provider of senior healthcare services specializing in post-acute care, will adopt the care collaboration platform of Collective Medical across 140 facilities. Using the platform, Consulate facilities will gain visibility into transitions of care, including when patients are observed, admitted, transferred or discharged to reduce preventable readmissions. With a significant East Coast presence, Consultate is the largest provider of post-acute services in Florida.