WakeMed takes $100 million plunge into electronic medical records

Submitted by johnmurawski on 11/14/2012 - 16:26
WakeMed Health & Hospitals said Wednesday it will invest about $100 million over five years on a comprehensive, system-wide health record system, the largest IT investment in WakeMed's history. It will replace about 130 software programs and applications with a unified system that connects hospitals, clinics, pathology labs and doctors' offices on a single network.
WakeMed's decision to begin negotiations with Epic Systems culminates 18 months of vetting competing medical records systems. WakeMed expects to install the system in 2015, with staff training to get underway next summer.
The 8,300-employee health system's transition to electronic health records is prompted by the The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly called Obamacare. The health care law will reward doctors and hospital that use electronic records with Medicare and Medicaid patients, and penalize those that don't achieve certain usage levels with electronic records.

Other health systems are making similar investments. Duke University Health Systems is replacing 135 electronic networks with an Epic Systems product over seven years at a cost of more than $500 million.
UNC Health Care expects to choose a new vendor in the coming weeks. That new electronic medical record system will be implemented across the UNC Health Care system, including at Rex Healthcare in Raleigh.
Hospitals could receive incentives worth several million dollars for using the electronic systems.
The maximum federal incentive for doctors is $63,750 under Medicaid and $44,000 under Medicare. Failure to achieve "meaningful use" of electronic records triggers penalties up to 5 percent of the federal reimbursement for treating the patient.





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