Computer System Links Doctors To Data Sacred Heart, Four Others To Join Hospital Network Next Month

Soon, a doctor in Chewelah will be able to follow a patient’s tests and lab results in Spokane - without ever leaving the office.

Emergency room workers at Holy Family Hospital will be able to see what a patient was treated for months earlier at Deaconess Medical Center.

A new computer system for patient records being installed in as many as 25 area hospitals by the end of the year should streamline information, reduce hospital costs, reduce duplicative tests and help doctors track patient care.

Hospital administrators also hope the system will cement relationships between Spokane and rural hospitals. They’d like to establish a seamless spectrum of care and help land patients with more serious medical problems in Spokane, rather than Seattle or Portland.

“As a patient, the results of your care or your lab tests will be available no matter where you go,” said Bill Fisher, who headed up the computer records project until last month. “If you have a lab test at Holy Family and an EKG at Sacred Heart and use the emergency room at Deaconess, those results will all be available to your physician.”

Deaconess, Valley Hospital and Medical Center and St. Luke’s Rehabilitation Institute have been using the computer system, called Meditech, since Empire Health Services converted in 1990.

On May 1, Sacred Heart Medical Center and the four hospitals in the Dominican Network - Holy Family Hospital, Deer Park Health Center and Hospital, Mount Carmel Hospital in Colville, and St. Joseph’s Hospital in Chewelah - will hop aboard the new system.

It’s yet another hospital collaboration. Sacred Heart and Deaconess combined their rehabilitation units and air ambulance services. They take turns handling trauma cases. The hospitals formed a doctor-hospital network.

This computer backbone is the first project under a new corporation set up by Spokane hospitals called Inland Northwest Consolidated Services. The hospitals’ information services departments will be merged under this umbrella.

The new project’s advocates hope doctors - especially rural ones - will hook into the computer system to track patients referred to Spokane hospitals.

“For a while there, that physician no longer knows what happens to his patient,” said Ronald Biondi, the fledgling corporation’s chief financial officer.

Administrators say the system will help reduce health-care costs by tracking tests and procedures at all regional hospitals.

Patients will be kept in a master index, with every person given a medical record number that will be the same at any hospital in the area. The system comes with firewalls and security precautions that administrators say will prevent patient confidentiality problems.

The final cost of combining the hospitals’ information services departments hasn’t yet been tallied. The savings isn’t yet known.

But in 1990, Deaconess, Valley and St. Luke’s spent $3 million to convert patient records to the system. Annual information costs dropped from $3 million for the three hospitals to about $1 million.

“It’s a tremendous reduction of duplication of procedures,” said Douglas Peters, who directs information services at Sacred Heart.

The 92 employees who’ve handled information services for Spokane hospitals now work for the new corporation, rather than any specific hospital. Administrators, well aware of employees nervous about change, aren’t speculating about any staff cuts.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo