The Golden Valley Health Centers will soon see the rewards of a $3 million grant it got earlier this year to help implement an electronic health records system.
The system, which will be implemented early next year, is expected to result in fewer medical errors.
Golden Valley is the leading local agency for the grant that was announced in early June. The grant, which came from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, was awarded to bring Golden Valley and five other health centers in the Central Valley together to work on the implementation of the systems at their facilities.
The project is being led by Ray Parris, chief information officer for Golden Valley. Parris said officials are evaluating various electronic health record software systems at this point.
Officials are looking for a company with a solid track record in the medical field and in the state of California, Parris said. They also want a company that's well established. "There are more vendors than the market will be able to support long-term," he added. "We want a company that we feel that will be around five years from now."
The adoption of the system won't be easy or quick, but the end results should be a reduction in medical mistakes, Parris said. "The paper system is slow and it's prone to errors," he added.
After officials are done reviewing the companies, they will send out the request for proposals. The implementation of the actual system should begin in February or March, Parris said.
Meanwhile, other health agencies are confronting issues with the implementation of their new systems. California Healthline -- a service of the California HealthCare Foundation that provides a daily digest of news, policy and opinion -- reported that the implementation of an electronic health record system at the San Francisco Department of Public Health has caused problems. Those problems might include the loss of documents on millions of dollars in services, according to California Healthline.
Golden Valley began a pilot electronic health record system program at five separate clinics two-and-a-half years ago, and "it was pretty successful," Parris said. "We haven't lost any information," he added.
The same goes for Mercy Medical Center in Merced.
Loretta Stuart-Edgerton, director of the Health Information Management department at Mercy, said she isn't aware of any issues since Mercy first began to implement pieces of its electronic health record system in May 2009.
Thirty-four employees have been busy coding, transcribing and scanning documents to get them into the system. Stuart-Edgerton said it's a lot of work, but everything has gone smoothly so far. "Within the last year, we've had a dramatic change in this department and staff have stepped up to the plate," she added.
Mercy has hybrid medical records, which means that it has some paper and some electronic records, Stuart-Edgerton said. A possible timetable for Mercy to be fully on electronic records is around 2014, she added.
Stuart-Edgerton said with the large number of patients at Mercy, the most formidable challenge from now until full implementation will be to make sure that all the information gets into the system.
Employees have been trained on how to use the system and will continue until the implementation is completed.
Robert McLaughlin, spokesman for Mercy, said Catholic Healthcare West, owner of Mercy, will spend just over $1 billion system-wide to implement electronic medical records, including the implementation at Mercy Medical Center.
Reporter Yesenia Amaro can be reached at (209) 388-6507, or yamaro@mercedsun-star.com.
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