Since implementing an electronic health record system in 1997, Heart of Texas Community Health Center has tripled the number of its patients, expanded from a single location to 10 sites, and shown improvement in important quality indicators.
For these achievements, the Heart of Texas, based in Waco, was named one of the 2009 HIMSS Davies Award winners by the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society.
“The recipients of the HIMSS Davies Awards are leaders in EHR implementation, as they prove that technology can be leveraged to produce value and achieve patient safety and quality outcomes with a positive ROI,” said David Collins, HIMSS’s director of healthcare information systems.
Heart of Texas, a 2010 Community Health Organization Davies Award winner, is a federally qualified health center that supports the oldest family medicine residency west of the Mississippi and serves the target population of 90,200 residents of McLennan County, Texas living at or below 200 percent of Federal Poverty Guidelines.
“Our EHR has been a cornerstone of our expansion and quality improvement efforts,” said Roland A. Goertz, MD, the CEO of Heart of Texas Health Center.
Goertz said the health center has been an EPIC customer since 1991, and has used the company’s practice management suite since 1995. Heart of Texas implemented the Verona, Wis.-based company’s EHR system in 1997.
According to Allen Patterson, the health center’s chief financial officer and chief operating officer, the EHR and supporting systems have assisted in patient care and resident education management.
“It helps us manage not only a single patient, but the patient population,” said Patterson. “It’s great for managing chronic care.”
Heart of Texas used its EHR to champion a large childhood immunization project. Patterson said the system’s feedback reports and reminders would help stem future outbreaks of disease and the large costs associated with it.
“We started looking at this about three years ago,” said Patterson. “The program increased the rate of immunization of 2-years-old children from 67 percent to 90 percent.”