Full operation of hospital EHR system by end of September

The Commonwealth Health Center will soon have a fully functional automated system that will shorten the waiting time for medical records and billings.
Commonwealth Healthcare Corp. network director Tony Reyes disclosed that the Electronic Health Record system is scheduled to be fully operational by the end of the fiscal year.

Reyes said the project was first initiated at CHC on Nov. 3, 2013, and was primarily focused on inpatient areas. The project’s first phase centered on documentation, which includes vital signs, nursing notes and physician’s notes, and medication administration records, among others.

The second phase was rolled out on Feb. 3, 2014, and concentrated on computerized physician order entry, which also basically allows authorized nurses to go to EHR to place medication orders when deemed necessary.

At present, the hospital’s laboratory unit is among the sections that now use the electronic health record system, which allows the automated transfer of records to attending physicians.

For the other units, however, Reyes said there remain some challenges in implementing the system, including the lack of manpower to do the work.

Reyes’ department has only two personnel doing all the work for the EHR project.

He said the project will eventually be expanded to the Rota and Tinian health clinics.

“This is not implemented yet on Rota and Tinian because we still have some issues to work on, including looking at cost-effective options to enable the connections between CHC, Tinian, and Rota,” according to Reyes.

Prior to expanding to the two islands, Reyes wants to see the EHR fully functional at the Kagman Community Health Center.

“We’re using the KCHC as test case to see what kind of telecom links are needed on the two islands,” he said.

Reyes disclosed that the cost of deploying the project to the two islands is close to $5,000 a month, requiring about 1.5 megabytes.

“The staffing resources, unfortunately, is not also there to be able to conduct simultaneous deployment of the project [to all three islands]. What we’re trying to do now is set up the base infrastructure first at CHC so we can extend it to the two islands,” he explained.

Reyes said CHCC plans to launch the system on Rota and Tinian by the third quarter of this fiscal year.

According to him, the challenges facing CHCC in implementing the system are not unique. The CNMI, it was learned, is the first public hospital that implemented the project in the Pacific region. This will speed up the process by depopulating the information that many coders normally do in a hospital setting.

Last year CHC received $1.4 million as an incentive for the project after it demonstrated “meaningful use” of the system at the hospital. The next incentive, amounting to $1.1 million, is expected to come in once CHC satisfies the requirements of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Reyes said they intend to use the additional funds to procure more computers and laptops for the hospital and for the expansion on Rota and Tinian.