MidMichigan Health, a nonprofit health system affiliated with the University of Michigan Health System, is ready to replace a mixed bag of technology with an electronic health record from Epic Systems, which will provide the clinical, administrative and billing software.
The goal: to connect its hospitals, physician practices and outpatient care facilities on one platform for medical records, registration, scheduling and billing. Contract cost: $55 million.
MidMichigan Health executives say they expect to recoup that investment within six years through efficiencies gained. They've named the endeavor the One Person, One Record project.
[See also: 11 Epic stories worth reading again.]
The health system's leaders announced the decision in a January 26 post on the MidMichigan Health website.
The EHR rollout is one of several initiatives the health system is undertaking to put patients and their families at the center of care while enhancing safety and quality, patient experience, employee and provider engagement and financial stability, officials noted.
Project team members have already begun traveling to Wisconsin for Epic training and will begin configuring the system in early 2016. MidMichigan anticipates the system will be fully operational at its hospitals and doctors' offices in April 2017.
A second phase of the project in late 2017 will connect MidMichigan Home Care and other newly owned subsidiaries to the rest of the health system.
"Our current state of multiple vendor systems requires us to maintain a large number of custom interfaces," said Dan Waltz, CIO. "This has simply become unsustainable, both in terms of the cost to maintain those systems and the potential risk and confusion that it introduces."
[See also: Epic scores EHR contract from Vanderbilt University Medical Center, beats Cerner.]
There is more to the project than setting up new technology.
"As part of the process, we will be evaluating all of our workflows, comparing them to industry best practices and making improvements," said Pankaj Jandwani, MD, MidMichigan Health's CMIO, in the news release. "It's an opportunity for us to think differently about how we work and to design our tools and our processes around what patients and their families need.
Jandwani added the changes would also help improve productivity and satisfaction, with tasks and roles "dramatically transformed."
As a result of the project, patients will be able to schedule appointments online and self-check-in from home or at on-site kiosks. The health system will also offer virtual care options such as telemedicine and e-visits, and the ability to view and pay MidMichigan Health bills from one account.
