Pathways has adopted Epic’s electronic health record system (EHR), making it the first organization of its kind to do so in the San Francisco Bay Area, it said this week.
The home health, palliative care, and hospice group started using Epic’s EHR earlier this month and has connected thus far to almost 2,000 hospitals and over 34,000 clinics nationwide that use Epic.
The enhanced data exchange capabilities with California’s major healthcare providers will help patients keep their primary physicians informed as they recover from surgery or an illness or receive more help with daily tasks, Pathways said. When a patient or his or her family choose Pathways, they will be connected to this same system.
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“Being able to bring patient data together from different sources is one of the biggest challenges in healthcare,” Pathways IT Director Brad Miller said in a statement. “Not having all the information available in one place can cause problems such as delays in treatment, duplicate testing or conflicting prescriptions. Epic is helping us overcome that challenge by connecting us to other health systems and consolidating all of our data into one place. ”
Pathways CEO Barbara Burgess added that more 12 million patients in Northern California are currently on Epic at 19 different facilities.
“Now they will be able to experience a transition of care from their hospital or clinic to service at home with Pathways,” Burgess said.
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