A $6 million draw for the Central Peninsula Hospital’s electronic medical record upgrade was unanimously approved by the borough assembly Tuesday night.
Hospital CEO Rick Davis says they chose software by the vendor EPIC for the federally mandated upgrade, which will help physician’s offices in and outside of the hospital transfer needed records easier.
Davis: “Alaska Regional in Anchorage, Providence in Anchorage, and St. Elias Hospital in Anchorage are all on the EPIC system. Those three hospitals are probably our main referral sources where we send patients and receive patients back from.”
The package being purchased includes upgrading local physicians’ systems that are associated with CPH along with facilitating the conversion of local doctors’ systems that are not associated with the hospital.
Davis says the Central Peninsula Hospital EPIC records data will be stored at two locations, which is typical.
Davis: Providence has a data storage site, a very secure, bunkered down, type secure storage area in Anchorage, that will be one of the places our data is housed. And then there’s also a secure storage facility, basically a server farm in Washington where it will be redundant storage.”
He clarified that the medical records are stored separately from other hospital’s records, simply co-located in the Providence Medical Center’s server.
One problem with the EPIC system: it is designed for large capacity hospitals and therefore cannot be used to communicate with Homer’s South Peninsula Hospital which uses a system designed for small hospitals.
The $6 million draw for the upgrade will be from the Central Peninsula General Hospital Inc. Plant Replacement and Expansion Fund.
