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MO Hospital Integration Sparks $6.5M Epic EHR Implementation

Perry County Health System tapped an Epic EHR implementation. Meanwhile, an FQHC in Kentucky and a specialty group in Pennsylvania have tapped eClinicalWorks for an EHR system.

By
  • Sarai Rodriguez
Published: 03 Apr 2023

An Epic EHR implementation is starting after Mercy and Perry County Memorial Hospital Board of Trustees recently finalized their lease agreement allowing Mercy to operate and manage the county-owned critical access hospital in Missouri. 

The Epic EHR implementation aims to enhance the patient experience, offering access to patient health information via the MyChart app, Epic's online patient portal. MyChart allows patients to review medications, test results, upcoming appointments, medical bills, and price estimates. Additionally, the portal enables patients to message their clinicians, attend e-visits, complete questionnaires, and schedule appointments. 

The lease starts with an eight-year term, followed by two optional six-year renewals, totaling up to 20 years. Perry County Health System is Mercy's 17th critical access hospital, either owned or operated via lease agreement, the press release stated.

“It is extremely challenging to operate small, independent rural hospitals. We see hospitals similar to ours closing across the state and the country,” said Chris Wibbenmeyer, CEO of Perry County Health System. “Our county commissioners and board of trustees had the vision and the courage to act now to preserve the vital community service we’re providing.” 

The addition of Epic represents a $6.5 million investment in Perry County by Mercy, with expectations of more investments to follow, Mercy officials wrote. 

Kentucky FQHC Moves to eClinicalWorks EHR 

As recent headlines demonstrate, EHR transitions are becoming increasingly common, with healthcare organizations seeking various improvements. 

Recently, Fairview Community Health Center, a Kentucky -based federally qualified health center (FQHC), announced a plan to transition to an eClinicalWorks EHR system to improve EHR efficiency and cost savings. 

By implementing the eClinicalWorks Cloud, Fairview Community Health Center seeks to experience seamless maintenance and upgrades, including scheduled windows for server and version updates, security enhancements, and convenient automated backups, the FQHC mentioned in a press release. 

Per the press release, the system provides scalability for quick adaptation to business needs, as well as downtime and disaster protection, ensuring automatic failover to an alternative data center during outages. Furthermore, the FQHC will gain access to the national cloud infrastructure hosted on Microsoft Azure, featuring SOC2 Type II, HITRUST, and ISO27001:2013 certified data centers. 

“To continue growing our practice, we needed a solution to meet our unique needs as an FQHC,” said John Lillybridge, CEO and executive director at Fairview Community Health Center. “The eClinicalWorks Cloud allows us to reduce costs, scale our operations as we see fit, and access patient data securely. Additionally, eClinicalWorks provides a unified solution for health centers, offering behavioral health, OBGYN, vision, and dental in one solution.” 

PA-BASED SURGICAL CARE SPECIALISTS SELECT ECLINICALWORKS EHR   

Surgical Care Specialists has announced a switch to the eClinicalWorks EHR to improve patient care, efficiency, cost savings, and practice growth.  

The 12-surgeon Pennsylvania-based multispecialty surgical group stated that the EHR implementation would take the practice to the next level. Surgical Care Specialists aim to reinforce their commitment to providing exceptional patient care through this development.  

The eClinicalWorks cloud offers real-time zonal and regional redundancy and flexibility, which Surgical Care Specialists saif will support the future growth of the practice.  

"We decided to transition to eClinicalWorks Cloud because it keeps our patient and practice data safe, secure, and fully accessible," said Kathie Allen, Practice  

Administrator of Surgical Care Specialists. "As our practice continues to grow, our data keeps accumulating. Having a cloud solution that is scalable and accommodating to our practice’s data growth without increasing costs was key. Also, the cloud facilitates remote workers, which can be essential given the shortage of qualified healthcare workers.”  

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