If you have been to see your medical provider anytime in recent memory, you have certainly watched them multi-task between keeping their eyes and attention on you, the patient, and the computer screen behind them to document your visit. A sometimes frustrating part of your visit for both parties will be getting a much-needed facelift on the first of May. All WRHS facilities and services will convert to a new Electronic Health Record (EHR) system, called Epic. Epic is an all-inclusive system designed to put all of the necessary information at your clinician's fingertips so that they can spend more time focused on you rather than their computer screen. Today WRHS utilizes two different EHR systems, and we still document on paper in various departments. The change will consolidate all of the data that goes into your care so that our caregiver teams do not have to search between systems to make timely decisions in your diagnosis. 

So why make the change now? We are required to have a certified system to document and track patient care, increased patient safety will be implemented with this new system that will auto-populate pieces of the chart, cutting back on the potential for data entry errors giving the caregiver more time with their eyes on the patient. Epic is the most widely used EHR in the world with over 250 million patients, also gives us the ability to better coordinate care with transfer facilities. Three of our primary transfer centers (CHI, Sanford, and Monument Health) utilize Epic in their facilities. This means when we transfer or refer a patient to one of these health systems, your information can be made available to those providers with less intervention than before. 

We began our search in 2018 for a new EHR, researching numerous systems, and unanimously chose EPIC. The downside to these systems is the cost associated with the EHRs. Epic is a large company with expensive software. Facilities of our size cannot afford to purchase directly. To afford Epic, we looked at two primary partners to provide us with the software without our organization having to give up our local independence. In the end, we settled on Sanford Health as the partner. We could lease our software through a Group Purchasing Organization partnership. The Board of Directors at the time were extremely vital in reviewing contracts and providing feedback to our attorneys so that the contract was written as such that WRHS would remain independent into the future.

As we move forward with our Epic implementation in May, you will undoubtedly see the Sanford logo at various touchpoints during your care. Please, rest assured that all decisions made in your care, your family's care, West River Health Services' future are made locally by the medical providers, administration, and our Board of Directors. There have been looming questions in the past if WRHS was trying to sell to Sanford, and even CHI; but WRHS has not and will not enter into any sort of buy-out discussions with other organizations. With your support, we are incredibly fortunate to be in the position that we are in to strategically decide on our partnerships, rather than doing so out of necessity.

There will be more updates coming on the migration to Epic, where we will provide information on how the system will enhance the quality healthcare provided to you here, close to home.

If you have questions regarding the upcoming change, please send them to Cindy Ham, Community Relations Coordinator, at cindyh@wrhs.com.