
Mercy has signed a lease agreement with the Perry County Memorial Hospital Board of Trustees in Missouri to operate and manage the county-owned critical access hospital. Mercy will invest $6.5 million in implementing Epic EHR to enhance the patient experience, while the hospital board hopes to preserve the vital community service provided by the hospital. Two other healthcare providers, Fairview Community Health Center in Kentucky and Surgical Care Specialists in Pennsylvania, have also announced their plans to implement eClinicalWorks EHR systems to improve efficiency, save money, and grow their practices.
Mercy, a healthcare provider, will implement an Epic EHR system after finalizing a lease agreement with the Perry County Memorial Hospital Board of Trustees. Mercy will operate and manage the county-owned critical access hospital in Missouri. The implementation of Epic EHR aims to enhance the patient experience by providing access to patient health information via the MyChart app, Epic’s online patient portal. The MyChart app will allow patients to review their medications, test results, upcoming appointments, medical bills, and price estimates. Additionally, patients can use the portal to message their clinicians, attend e-visits, complete questionnaires, and schedule appointments.
The lease agreement begins with an eight-year term, which includes two optional six-year renewals, for a total of up to 20 years. The Perry County Health System is Mercy’s 17th critical access hospital, either owned or operated under a lease agreement. The implementation of Epic EHR represents a $6.5 million investment in Perry County by Mercy, with expectations of more investments to follow.
The addition of Epic EHR is expected to provide various benefits to both Mercy and Perry County. For Mercy, the implementation of Epic EHR will allow them to improve patient care and enhance the patient experience. For Perry County, the lease agreement will help to preserve the vital community service that the hospital provides, as rural hospitals are struggling to remain open across the state and the country.
EHR transitions are becoming increasingly common, with healthcare organizations seeking various improvements. Recently, the 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 save money. According to a press release, 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 eClinicalWorks Cloud 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 ISO 27001:2013 certified data centers.
Surgical Care Specialists, a Pennsylvania-based multispecialty surgical group, has announced the switch to the eClinicalWorks EHR to improve patient care, efficiency, cost savings, and practice growth. The 12-surgeon 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 the Surgical Care Specialist says will support the future growth of the practice. Additionally, the cloud facilitates remote workers, which can be essential given the shortage of qualified healthcare workers.
Overall, the implementation of Epic EHR and eClinicalWorks EHR systems aims to provide various benefits to healthcare organizations, including improved patient care, enhanced patient experience, increased efficiency, cost savings, and practice growth. The usage of EHR systems in healthcare is becoming increasingly important, as they provide healthcare organizations with a centralized location for all patient data, which can help improve patient outcomes, reduce errors, and improve communication between healthcare providers.