Maine General Health (MGH) EMR
Maine General Health (MGH) launched an electronic medical record (EMR) in 2002. To take this technology beyond all barriers to achieve community-wide improvement in health care quality, safety, access, and cost, MGH made two key decisions:
- MGH would make the system available for all providers affiliated with the health system, whether owned by MGH or independent.
- MGH decided a patient’s chart would be shared across all practices to make things safer and more efficient.
- Reference: https://www.mainegeneral.org/body.cfm?id=1426
Implementation began in seven primary care pilot sites in January 2003. In September 2004, the project was augmented by a $1.5 million grant from the Agency on Health Research and Quality (AHRQ). Today, there are 29 participating practices, 130 clinicians, 500 users, and 70,000 patients registered in the shared medical record system. By using a single platform in a single database across practices, MGH has achieved interoperability in advance of interoperability standards.
Integrating practice data is seen as the first step toward standardizing and integrating care. Next steps include embedding cost-effective standards of care in the system, increasing investment in collaboration to share responsibility for all the care for the patients, and using this foundation of informatics in a transformative manner. Reference: http://www.hcplive.com/mdnglive/articles/EN_TechSec_One_Patient
