A national health-care information technology group has selected Novant Health Inc. as the sixth recipient of an award related to implementing patient electronic health records.
The Health Information and Management Systems Society last week presented Novant with its Stage 7 Ambulatory award for EHR analytics. The award signifies that Novant has achieved the group’s highest level on its EHR adoption model.
Novant completed in August the rollout of the Epic EHR system for its 350 physician clinics, saying it accomplished the goal three years ahead of schedule and “under budget.” It says there are more than 200,000 MyChart users. Novant refers to its version of Epic as Dimensions Acute.
Carl Armato, Novant’s chief executive, said that a $600 million, five-year conversion of its health records from paper to electronic is helping the system’s bottom line. It is the largest financial initiative in Novant history.
“Novant Health used health IT as its linchpin for an enterprise-wide transformation,” said John Hoyt, executive vice president for HIMSS Analytics.
“While they are not the first to do this, the massive size is among the few biggest and most successful. The return on investment is rock-solid and among the best we have seen.”
The system launched Epic at Presbyterian Medical Center in Charlotte on Oct. 5 and plans to launch it within other Charlotte-area facilities in March and within its Forsyth County facilities in August.
“We’re rolling out in a similar approach to our physician practices, which we found to work well for us,” Novant spokeswoman Kati Everett said Monday.
Dave Garrett, Novant’s chief information officer, said receiving the award represents a bonus for “leveraging our EHR as a catalyst for system-wide transformation. Because of this, our patients are benefiting from coordinated medical care.”
There have been several media reports, including by the Journal, of local and national examples of cost overruns and delayed patient billing cycles because of challenges in implementing Epic. In some examples, analysts have said health care systems did not correctly project the amount of time and staffing required for the data transfer of paper health records to electronic versions.
Novant has not provided a breakdown of its costs for implementing Epic. It reported Aug. 30 having $161.5 million in capital expenditures for the first half of 2013 compared with $91.9 million a year ago.
Some local health-care systems, such as Cone Health and Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, have reported millions of dollars in nonprojected additional expenditures related to their rollout of Epic.
Wake Forest Baptist went live with Epic on Sept. 22, 2012, in a rollout that included its main campus and facilities, but not affiliated hospitals in Davie County and Lexington.
Dr. John McConnell, its chief executive, has said that approach “was absolutely necessary for patient safety.” He said he remains confident in Epic’s long-term benefit to the center.
The rollout of Epic contributed to a $55.1 million operational loss in fiscal 2012-13 for Wake Forest Baptist, according to a financial report released Aug. 30. The center’s fiscal year ended June 30. A final audited report will be released in November.
Stock investment gains of almost $54 million helped Wake Forest Baptist offset much of the operational revenue loss and dropped the overall loss to $571,000. Not-for-profit hospitals depend on investment income to increase their bottom line and to help pay for capital investments.
Novant is taking an all-hands-on-deck approach to implementing Epic at Clemmons, Forsyth and Kernersville medical centers and Medical Park Hospital, as well as its Hawthorne Outpatient Surgery facility.
That means most employees – listed as staff and physicians – will not be allowed to take vacation from May through August without previous approval. Novant has about 5,000 employees in the Triad.
The system took a similar vacation approach this year with Presbyterian employees.
