GE Healthcare Eases Electronic Medical Record Implementation For Mid-Size Hospitals
by
Robert Garment, Executive Editor | June 21, 2006
Baylor Regional Medical Center
at Plano
GE Healthcare, a leading vendor of clinical and financial information technology solutions, today announced the launch of Centricity Enterprise Remote Services, which will facilitate the adoption of integrated electronic medical records (EMRs) by mid-size healthcare organizations. The solution, unveiled during the 2006 Healthcare Financial Management Association Annual Conference in Orlando, Fla., will provide the capabilities of GE Centricity Enterprise (formerly IDX CarecastTM) on a remotely hosted ASP subscription basis.
"Remote hosting puts sophisticated health information technology within reach of many more hospitals, not just academic medical centers and large integrated delivery networks," said David Henriksen, vice president and general manager of GE Healthcare. "Integrated software solutions could yield significant benefits in terms of both efficiency and quality of care, but until now, mid-size organizations simply didn't have the resources to implement or maintain such a robust system."
Hospitals using Centricity Enterprise Remote Services will have access to enterprise-wide clinical and financial applications, without the initial outlay required to purchase hardware and software, and without dedicating resources to implementing, maintaining and upgrading the software. Customers will utilize leading digital healthcare applications such as computerized order processing, nursing and physician documentation and electronic medication administration record (MAR), patient management, accounting, registration and scheduling.
The first organization to sign-up for the new service is THE HEART HOSPITAL Baylor Plano, a full-service heart hospital, which is scheduled to open in January 2007 as part of the prestigious Baylor Health Care System.
"Centricity Enterprise Remote Services will provide us with a strategic EMR solution and allow us to leverage GE's software expertise to run our clinical and financial software applications while our clinicians do what they do best - deliver safe, quality, compassionate health care," said Mark Valentine, president, THE HEART HOSPITAL Baylor Plano.
Under the ASP arrangement, the Centricity Enterprise system will run on HP Integrity NonStopTM servers owned by GE and located at its hosting center in Chicago. GE will be responsible for all technical support of Centricity Enterprise software versions, including installation of new release software and maintenance of the NonStop servers.
