KIG Healthcare Solutions

The Illinois Critical Access Hospital Network and KIG Healthcare Solutions today announced that two ICAHN member hospitals have partnered to implement an innovative electronic medical record solution in two hospitals in Southern Illinois.  The new technology will also be available at selected physician offices in each community that share clinical data with Salem Township and Washington County hospitals.

Development of this demonstration project is based on the premise that the electronic medical record requirements of selected critical access hospitals can best be served by a single, hybrid product that supports care documentation in both inpatient and outpatient settings.

NextGen Healthcare Information Systems, a leading vendor of fully integrated electronic medical records and enterprise practice management solutions, will work with project participants to customize its EHR solution to meet these unique needs.  Implementation assistance will be provided by KIG Healthcare Solutions, a NextGen authorized reseller based in St. Louis.

The Illinois Critical Access Hospital Network and the Illinois Department of Public Health received funding for the project in September 2007 through the Health Information Technology Network Implementation Grant awarded by the United States Department of Health and Human Services.  The grant will provide $1.6 million to help support the total project cost of $3.016 million.  The balance of funds will come from participants’ resources.  The Illinois project is one of only sixteen such projects funded nationwide.

Project funds will be used to implement electronic medical records and a picture archiving and communications system at Washington County Hospital in Nashville, to implement electronic medical records at Salem Township Hospital in Salem, and to implement a community-wide information exchange using NextGen Community Health Solution.  The exchange will allow health care providers from one of the key referral partners – SSM St. Mary’s/Good Samaritan in Mt. Vernon – to electronically share patient information with all other interested providers such as physician practices, dentists, public health departments, federally qualified health centers and long term facilities.

“We are very excited about this project,” says Pat Schou, executive director of ICAHN.  “We are confident it will serve as the prototype for more adoption among other member hospitals and physician offices.

Moving from paper records to electronic health record systems has been identified as a critical component of 21^st century health care. Patients’ health care information today is scattered among multiple providers and facilities.  More people take more medications, increasing the potential for adverse drug interactions.  “Health care and its related information and reports have become more complex,” says Schou.  “Providers need more thorough information at the time of care, whether routine or in an emergency, to correctly and safely treat patients.”  The initial months of the project have been devoted to vendor selection, hospital infrastructure reconfiguration and upgrades, equipment purchases and installation, and legal review and negotiation of software and service support agreements.

The Illinois Critical Access Hospital Network is a not-for-profit 501 (c)(3) corporation established in 2003 for the purposes of sharing resources, education, promoting operational efficiencies, and improving health care services for member critical access hospitals and their rural communities.

KIG Healthcare Solutions, Inc. is an authorized reseller of the award-winning line-up of EHR and EPM products available from NextGen Healthcare Information Systems, Inc.