Meritus Health signed a deal Monday that will require about a $100 million investment to integrate electronic health records to better help patients and health care providers, according to the health system’s president.
The deal with Epic, based in Verona, Wis., caps an 18-month process involving more than 1,000 Meritus employees and officials, as they reviewed six vendors and evaluated two finalists in-depth, said Joseph P. Ross, president and chief executive officer of Meritus Health.
Meritus will invest about $90 million to $100 million over five years to modernize its records systems, including the time it pays people to be trained and staff members hired for extra work, he said.
Ross said he anticipates the new records system going live next summer in one “big bang,” as opposed to a phased-in approach.
Epic will provide different software components that will address both health records and billing, Meritus officials said.
Ross said cybersecurity procedures already provide separate internet lines for different systems.
For example, billing software, patient health records and email each has different internet lines, he said.
Meritus officials have already begun pulling records together to create a single identify for each patient, Ross said.
Currently, one person might have different electronic records for each health provider he or she uses in the system, including primary doctors, specialists and the emergency room.
It is believed that combining the records will result in better and more efficient care, and a better experience for both patients and health care providers, Ross said.
Electronic health records also aid Meritus in identifying health trends in the community, he said.
Eventually, Meritus Health officials would like to get other community-based or private medical practices to participate in the software system, Ross said.
That will aid with the databases and provide prompts to medical providers if, for example, a patient reports an allergic reaction to a certain medication, he said.
Epic’s software also has the capability of interfacing with pharmacy software, Ross said.
If a patient is a dedicated customer of a particular pharmacy, health providers would have greater access to his or her prescription records with authorization, officials said.
The hospital already has access to opioid prescription information, regardless of whether the customer uses one pharmacy.
Ross said other benefits to customers will be the ability to make appointments online and access their online health portal via their cellphone — two features the current electronic health-records system doesn’t have.
Financial impact
For the two finalists, Meritus officials visited a company client, a similar community-based medical system with 250 to 300 beds that wasn’t in an urban area, as well as corporate offices to judge how each would fit with its culture, Ross said.
“We preferred Epic over the two. (Our) clinicians particularly preferred Epic,” Ross said.
The hefty investment will be covered by Meritus’ reserves, including federal funds the not-for-profit health system secured under the Affordable Care Act by reaching certain levels of electronic health-records use, he said.
The investment is expected to adversely affect Meritus’ financial performance for two years due to short-term expenses, he said.
Meritus has already started hiring some additional information-services workers, with the equivalent of about 25 full-time positions needed, Ross said.
Hagerstown Community College is anticipating starting a health information-management associate-degree program in January, including a certificate program for electronic records, said David Warner, vice president for academic affairs and student services.
The Maryland Higher Education Commission still needs to approve the proposed program, Warner said.
The timing of the Meritus records’ modernization is coincidental, he said.
HCC is pursuing the education program because electronic health records is an area experiencing growth and development, Warner said.
