07 Dec McPherson Hospital needs support
It shouldn’t be a surprise to most that our health care system has long exceeded the large rooms with thousands upon thousands of medical records. Major hospitals around the country started to move towards paperless records keeping starting in the late 90s and well into the late 2000s. The University of Washington Medicine completed its transition of its three separate hospitals implementing an electronic medical record (EMR) system in 2007 according to NIH.gov.
As the larger hospitals go so does industry standard, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act was adopted in 2009 requiring the meaningful use of Electronic Health Records. According to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, 94% of non-federal acute care hospitals were in compliance with this requirement as of 2017.
So, what is an EMR system and how does this affect McPherson hospital today?
The Agency for Healthcare Research and quality describe and EMR system as “an electronic record of health-related information on an individual that can be created, gathered, managed, and consulted by authorized clinicians and staff within one health care organization.”
According to Dr. Michael Bloustine the system currently being used by McPherson hospital has been stretched to its limits.
“As our organization has grown and services have increased, our medical record system has unfortunately not been able to keep pace.” Dr. Bloustine said, “We’ve optimized and tweaked the existing system as much as it allows. However, we need even more power and efficiency that can only come with a more modern electronic medical record system.”
A new medical record system is a significant capital investment that is out of the scope of the hospital’s financial resources. After much research and consideration, they have narrowed their search to a company called MediTech.
“MediTech is a trusted system that is in use in many other regional facilities, some larger, some smaller than ours. While no system is perfect, we’ve thoroughly vetted MediTech and we feel it has much-needed capabilities that will improve all parts of our operation.” Dr. Bloustine said, “It will especially help our primary care clinics where our current system is just not able to perform well.”
The McPherson Healthcare Foundation applied for a grant to help alleviate the cost of switching systems, but in order to receive full funding the grant requires a match. A goal of $150,000 (the estimated up-front cost of the system) was set. The foundation hopes to secure that total before the end of 2024.
The grant opportunity is critical in acquiring the system as the capital investment needed has been described “out of the scope of the hospital’s financial resources”.
Donations to the project can be given here
“I wholeheartedly support this critical component of our latest strategic plan and I’ve already donated to the Foundation for this specific purpose.” Dr. Bloustine said, “I hope you’ll consider supporting our efforts as well.”