According to St Paul Pioneer Press…

HealthEast plans to spend $135 million over five years on a new electronic health record system for its St. Paul-based network of hospitals and clinics.

Apparently they currently use seven different electronic health records in different parts of their network. They are now moving to one solution, Epic. According to the article, about one-third of clinics in Minnesota and one-fourth of hospitals used an electronic health record from Epic. Funny but the name came up in a meeting this week, when I met with someone at a smaller clinic who is trying to find a way to get their system to talk to Epic.

The article highlights some of the benefits of the change…

“That’s the ultimate goal of having electronic records — that regardless of where you go, your record could be accessible,” [vice president of information services at the Minnesota Hospital Association] Sonneborn said.

…

Patty [vice president and chief medical informatics officer at HealthEast] added: “It will make us much more efficient, and allow us to spend more time … caring for the patient (rather) than caring for the patient’s record.”

The impetus for change? A vendor’s decision to stop supporting the electronic health record software currently used in its hospitals. It reminded me of several of the speakers at the MHTA CIO Panel last week. Many mentioned that they had change “thrust upon them” in one way or another – changing policy, funding, regulation… But each seemed to view the change in a very positive way. It gave them an opportunity to think bigger, think more strategically.