SRMC Unveils Patient Data System

Your child is an active teenager. Some would say reckless and overactive. He doesn’t play. He dares death and injury to stand in front of him.

Eventually it does and the next call is to the Emergency Room and resulting doctor visits. The process is complicated by the parents having to ensure they have copies of procedures and records after each step toward recovery.

Sidney Regional Medical Center is working to minimize the detail-intensive process. A new program in the works will allow physicians at Sidney Regional to send files to specialists at other participating facilities without the patient having to keep track of the physical records.

SRMC is contracting with UCHealth to provide a method for electronic transfer of files. The process requires Sidney Regional to change how it delivers services, does billing, manages patient files and other issues probably not thought of yet. It will also, according to SRMC Chief Executive Officer Jason Petik, provide more efficient collaboration between physicians and facilities. Petik said the Epic system will allow records to follow a patient to another doctor or facility without the worry of keeping the records secure.

“They (records) can be used anywhere Epic is being used,” he said. “We’re doing this through a partnership with UCHealth.”

SRMC started the transition to Epic in May and expects to have the changeover completed by June 2020. The process takes about 16 months, according to SRMC Director of Marketing/PR Evie Ranslem-Parsons.

“We are at day 308,” she said.

The process started with the board of directors approving the new electronic health record system in the fall of 2018. The plan is to have the financial management system in the Epic program by May 2020 and be fully live by June 2020.

Petik said the program will be available at any facility contracted with Epic.

“We have a lot of different specialists in all these locations,” he said.

He said Epic would allow the transfer of patient records from Sidney Regional to specialists and from specialty clinics to a primary care physician at Sidney Regional Medical Center.

“It really focuses on the patient,” he said.

The program could potentially have global benefits, according to Petik. He said any facility serviced by Epic can transfer files.

Epic is a fully integrated, CMS-certified electronic medical record (EMR) system and is the mostly widely used EMR in the US, according to the Uchealth website. The website says more than 50 percent of the US population uses Epic and “more than 1,800 physicians throughout Colorado, Wyoming and Nebraska utilize UCHealth’s shared ambulatory patient record in Epic.”