LAS VEGAS – Parkview Health in northeastern Indiana has created a pathway for rural patients in 23 counties to benefit from a “single story of care.”
His HIMSS25 Global Conference and Exhibition presentation focuses on lessons learned after growing “Business within the Business” for 13 years.
The non-profit healthcare organization has created an Electronic Health Record (EHR) system sharing program that provides spectacular web-enabled access to over 400 rural hospitals and clinics.
“We want them to not only survive, but also to thrive,” he said Tuesday as he launched his HIMSS25 education session here.
“We need to make sure we're not losing money when we do that.”
By hosting a full EHR, a 1,300-bed non-profit health system handles all the overhead that's in it.
“Our customers have to endure some of that burden,” he told attendees who are interested in filling the rural divisions of the region and learning how to improve access, population health and patient experience.
He noted that rural hospitals and clinics face several rate-limiting factors that exclude access to high-quality EHRs, from minimal resources and technology to geographical isolation and financial burdens.
Parkview chose EHR EPIC in 2011, and by 2013 the board determined that establishing an EHR sharing program could improve continuity in care, population health management, and more.
Parkview customers benefit from accessing secure data and reporting across the sharing system. Their patients also prefer to schedule all appointments and have access to their health information in one place, Wynn said.
However, sharing EHRs or switching to a shared shared that is both complete and inclusive is not a small change leap for either organization.
“If we've implemented these before, we know that it's a big effort for these community hospitals,” Wynn said.
“It's not just dropping the EHR. Once in, things change for those people. We try to make this process the most positive experience possible.
“Transformation and archiving are big factors in making this happen,” he said.
For example, when a rural system signs and data starts to move through a third party, or existing billing manually does not move.
Clinically, rural healthcare institutions leave the legacy system when they are up and running, but continue until the claims are completed, new claims appearing in the epic and necessary reports are married at the backend.
“We're lucky enough to have a few different options when it comes to using the tools we use,” Wynn said.
“But we are trying to choose a vendor that can continue to understand what we are doing.
Rural customers have data in “all different formats, storage, archives,” he noted.
“When you're moving things in a separate way from legacy systems to epic, we bring the CCD documentation right away. That's the easiest thing to do, and there are a few other factors,” he explained.
EPIC provides tools to help extract customer data extraction, but healthcare organizations must determine the amount of information needed, and whether data must be archived to active storage for image and document management.
Some customers may choose to extract manuals, and ParkView helps you plan how it will happen, Winn said.
After that, there may be some reinforcement that customers want to create.
“The only thing that exists between us as an agreement is the fact that we share an EHR,” Wynn explained. “That's it. Everything about business becomes strictly business. They're independent.”
The entire process and then ParkView provides resources and training, supports customers in the event of a data breach, and discusses enhancements.
“We want to make sure that we meet the needs of our organization,” Wynn said.
Pricing for EHR shared products in Health System is important as Parkview's teams (such as IT and Finance) support the program.
Workforce tasks related to program management are growing with the size of our customer base.
“You can imagine the accounts receivables department for finance by looking at what our accounts are doing. I think the other day I said, 'Recently, Dave, you'll have to hire people who work for them.' But I have to pay them,” he said.
“It really creates more burdens. The bigger we get, the more difficult it becomes.”
Andrea Fox is a senior editor at Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a publication of HIMSS Media.
