Elliot Health System in Manchester has used Epic as its electronic medical record (EMR) system for many years. Epic is considered the gold-standard in the industry. When SolutionHealth was founded in 2018, the goal was to have a common shared EMR. On December 5, 2020, that goal of a shared EMR will be achieved when Southern New Hampshire Health goes live with Epic.
“Elliot Health System and Southern New Hampshire Health came together as SolutionHealth for one reason, to provide the highest quality health care to the people of southern New Hampshire,” says Dr. Andrew Watt, Informatics Chief Information Officer for SolutionHealth. “With both campuses on the same EMR, our providers have better access to their patients’ complete medical history and our patients can easily see providers on one campus or the other seamlessly. There is no need to transfer records from one place to another as they can be seen by any provider within our system.”
Dr. Watt says Epic has many features that benefit providers and patients alike with the goal of delivering the best care possible:
- The record is shared between all providers who see the patient, so specialists can see what lab tests have already been ordered, can view test results, etc.
- When visiting the Emergency Department, the care team, who might be meeting a patient for the first time, has quick and easy access to the record.
- Patients can access and verify their medical history, medications, and allergies via the online patient portal called SolutionHealth MyChart. The portal will also allow patients to pay their medical bills electronically.
- Having a single record, rather than multiple paper records, improves patient safety during transitions between care, such as when seeing a primary care provider after a visit to the Emergency Department or surgery.
In addition to sharing records between SolutionHealth providers, providers in other regional health care systems who use Epic can also gain access. “This enables the exchange of relevant health information between every member of a patient’s care team using an Epic tool called CareEverywhere,” explains Dr. Watt.
For SolutionHealth and its providers, Epic affords the ability to analyze data. “We plan to use this function to improve individual patient care and to understand the health of our community as a whole,” says Dr. Watt. “Having data from the patients we see every day will give us vital insight into health needs and trends of the population we serve. This data will likely have major implications on the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases in our community over the coming decades.”
