06 | Kadlec Regional Medical Center
40,000+procedures 38 radiologists 9 locations
Budgetary concerns for implementing an EMR Vice President of Information Services and Chief Information Officer David Roach said budgetary concerns are often the biggest hurdle in receiving buy-in from the executive suite on a major system.
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Also, staff and physicians have a comfort level with
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the existing clinical applications and may be hesitant to learn something new.
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When presenting the need for an integrated health record, Roach said he used a 10-year projec-
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tion to demonstrate cost savings. He estimated the maintenance costs of Epic over 10 years compared with the maintenance and upgrade fees of the 30
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existing applications that Epic would replace. “One unified system will save you money in the long run,” Roach said. “It’s a large investment in the front end, but when we looked 10 years out, the
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back-end savings were huge. I knew the time hori-
Amy Smith | 509.734.1807 Amy.Smith@chartercom.com
zon would need to be long to make the point clear to the CEO and finance committee.” Once he received buy-in from the finance com-
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mittee and CEO on the unified system, Roach found the need for many more budget items that may
Kadlec Regional Medical Center All healthcare facilities are interested in or moving toward electronic health records, both as a federal requirement and for improved efficiency and safety within organizations. Implementing these systems across a health system or even within one hospital is often a headache and requires many moving parts coming together.
David Roach, Vice President of Information Services and CIO
Kadlec Regional Medical Center implemented the Epic suite of products a little over a year ago with much success. The hospital did a “big-bang” go-live, bringing up all service lines in the hospital simultaneously, and replaced more than 30 smaller applications with one large, integrated medical record. As a 280-bed acute-care community hospital, Kadlec is one of the smaller clients with whom Epic has engaged. Kadlec’s services include open-heart surgery, interventional cardiology, a neonatal intensive-care unit, among many others, as well as physician practices and primaryand specialty-care clinics, for a total of about 15 sites.
sometimes get overlooked or not included in the initial phase of planning. He suggests hiring legal counsel for contract negotiations, mainly because
Roach said the consultants were onsite for about
the investment is likely to be a 10 to 20-year part-
14 months, which was no small investment, but it
nership.
was necessary.
“When contracting for a product that would
At the go-live, Roach also had about 100
outlive me, I hired a couple of lawyers to assist with
consultants onsite for two weeks providing floor
contract negotiations,” he said. “It is helpful to get
support to clinical staff.
some expertise on your side. Contracting is key to a successful partnership.” Staffing was another large budget item. The hospital had a shortage of IT staff at the time, so
“The cost of consultants was not insignificant, but it was the right thing to do to support the clinical people making the conversion,” he said.
work and maintain the existing clinical applications,
Getting the clinical staff on board with an EMR
while the full-time IT staff focused on learning the
Getting physicians, nurses, and other clinical
new applications, receiving certifications, meet-
staff on board with a new electronic system can
ing with physicians and medical staff to configure
be a major challenge. Roach said his team opted
the system to meet their needs, and other training.
to go live with all hospital departments at once
Roach hired consultants to fill in the day-to-day
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