Overview - Electronic Medical Record
Thundermist has switched from a paper medical record to an Electronic Medical Record (EMR) at its South County and West Warwick sites. The Woonsocket site will become a "paperless" site at the end of July. The EMR which Thundermist is using is eClinicalWorks. This effort will improve the care of our 26,000 patients and allow Thundermist to continue its quality improvement efforts in primary care.
The EMR is in alignment with larger statewide projects in health information technology, including the RI Department of Health's Regional Health Information Organization project to build a statewide health information data exchange system. This project, led by work done at the RI Quality Institute, will allow health care providers who use EMRs to share data to coordinate the care of patients should they go to a lab, hospital, emergency care centers, etc. This will avoid errors and duplication of services while improving the quality of the care they receive.
The electronic medical record is necessary for Thundermist to support its work to provide evidence-based, population-focused, chronic disease management. Many practice management and primary care EMR systems were designed to support what primary care doctors do now (which is to provide episodic care) not for what doctors will be doing in the future- which is to provide comprehensive, interdisciplinary, evidence-based, population/outcome focused primary and preventive health care.
This system provides a seamless interface for the integration of comprehensive medical, behavioral health, dental and pharmaceutical information. It will enhance Thundermist’s outcome measurement capacity, and allow for clinical data aggregation across sites by a variety of indicators such as disease, race, age, gender, and provider panel. It will be a vital support to Thundermist ongoing clinical quality improvement efforts, including risk reduction, practice evaluation, patient education and provider education.
Thundermist Health Center was a founding member of Electronic Health Records of Rhode Island (EHRRI) to bring electronic health records to all its sites and patients. Other founding members of EHRRI are Coastal Medical, Lifespan/Physicians Professional Services Organization, and Care New England's physician-hospital organizations at Women and Infants Hospital and Kent Hospital. This partnership represents over 1,200 physicians who will adopt eClinicalWorks and allowed a succesful negotiation of a volume discount.
“Our future lies in innovation and excellence. We must be prepared to measure ourselves against the best practices in patient service, business efficiency and clinical effectiveness.”