The Collegian

Issue date: 11/20/08 Section: Beyond

Media Credit: Andrew Dodson Hillsdale Community Health Center is preparing to implement a new information sysytem that will benefit both patients and health-care providers.

This month, Hillsdale Community Health Center began a three-part move to a health information system that will improve patient care, streamline processes, store data and speed administrative and billing processes.

"The big reason the hospital has done this is to improve patient care," said Tracy Rowland, director of health information. "We have a progressive administration that goes out and realizes the technology available for patients. People think of rural hospitals as a Band-Aid clinic, but we're not. We stay on the cutting edge of everything."

President George W. Bush mandated hospitals move to electronic records by 2014.

Hillsdale Community Health Center bought its $800,000 system from Alabama-based Computer Programs and Systems, Inc., after extensive price checking, research and negotiation, according to Judy Gabriele, director of development. It will replace the hospital's 20-year-old system.

CPSI did not return calls before publication.

Rural hospitals often have a harder time implementing health information systems than their bigger counterparts, said Michael Meit, the deputy director of the National Opinion Research Center Walsh Center for Rural Health Analysis. He conducted a study called "Small, Standalone and Struggling; The Adoption of Health Information Technology by Rural Hospitals."

"It's not uncommon for rural hospitals to get health information technology," Meit said, "but it's certainly challenging for them. The cost is considerable, and certainly one of the barriers for rural hospitals that they operate on lower budgets."

He said good research of systems is key for rural hospitals, which can't afford to choose the wrong system.

On Nov. 1, Hillsdale Community Health Center began entering patients' clinical and financial information into the new database, Rowland said. The system scans patients' drivers licenses into the computer and stores the image along with their billing information, medical records, copies of tests and other relevant data. In a process expected to take up to two years, the hospital will enter information, scan old records and archives, eventually becoming completely digitized, Rowland explained.

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