Maine Hospital Invests in MEDITECH EHR to Optimize Clinical Workflows

Houlton Regional Hospital (HRH) in Maine is implementing a MEDITECH EHR platform to optimize clinical workflows and care coordination.

The EHR will support data exchange between the hospital and the Houlton Regional Hospital outpatient physician office practices.

Work on the implementation began in January 2022, and hospital officials said the system is set to go live on October 1st.

“This is an exciting time for our organization,” Shawn Anderson, CEO of Houlton Regional Hospital, said in a press release. “This has been in the planning phase for about five years now. The new record will improve our workflow on many levels and will help us live up to our mission of providing safe, compassionate, exceptional care in a much more coordinated way.”

“This new EMR will, for the first time, allow for every single patient interaction from anywhere within the HRH hospital system to be integrated into one single patient record – thus creating a fully-integrated medical record for HRH patients,” Anderson added.

The platform also includes a robust patient portal where patients can access their health information, sign consent forms, and complete pre-appointment questionnaires through the portal. Patients can also update insurance information, addresses, phone numbers, and medications.

Information on the current patient portal will not carry over to the new portal. Patients that use the existing portal can download their data to their personal electronic devices for safekeeping. The current portal will remain “live” until January 2023 to allow patients time to retrieve any information they want to retain.

Only medical data generated on or after October 1st, 2022, at the hospital will be viewable in the new portal.

As staff learns to navigate the new EHR system, officials anticipate some modest care delays during the first few weeks of implementation.

“We ask that our patients and their families be patient with us during that time,” said Gina Brown RN, COO and project sponsor.