WakeMed Physician Practices took its new electronic health records system live on Monday, marking a significant milestone in its $ 100 million investment to update record keeping.
As part of federal health reform – although, technically, in a separate piece of legislation from the Affordable Care Act – health systems around the nation have been upgrading health records. Partly due to HIPAA (the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act), health care records have still been kept largely on paper, something that has contributed to rising health care costs as patients can end up with several disparate records. This has contributed to care that is uncoordinated and duplicated, one of many reasons the national health care bill has skyrocketed.
Ideally, patients will gain one health record that is filed electronically, and accessible to any health care provider, regardless of physical location, something that should help reduce the overall health care spend.
WakeMed will invest some $100 million upgrading the entire system, which is called Epic, though only the WakeMed Physician Practices went live Monday. The Duke Health System is already live and the UNC Health Care system will be fully live later this month; various parts of the UNC system are already online, including at UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill.
All the main hospital systems in the Triangle chose the Epic EHR which is made by Epic Systems, based in Wisconsin. Epic has a nationwide client base of 315 mid-size and large hospitals, medical groups and health care organizations. Although systems are supposed to communicate with each other, those hospital groups running the same system are expected to be able to communicate better with one another.
“Epic is an important investment for us in support of our mission to improve the health and well-being of our community,” says Donald Gintzig, WakeMed president & CEO. “Moving to a single medical record system means information is available to the right person at the right time, anywhere it is needed. It also gives our patients the opportunity to have better access to their own health records and history.”
More than 50 primary and specialty care offices will have access to one complete medical record, which WakeMed officials say will result in less duplication, safer care, fewer phone calls and a more seamless continuum of care.
