Customer Spotlight: Berkshire Health Systems Finds Downtime Solution in Physician Portal

By: Donna Carroll, Editor, The MEDITECH Community Bulletin

Lately, I’ve noticed an increasing number of resumes which mention the product PatientKeeper on them, and I became more curious about the vendor and its product offerings. So, I started to ask around and found one customer--nearly in my own backyard--which was not only using the product, but singing its praises. That organization is Berkshire Health Systems (BHS), based in Pittsfield, Massachusetts. I called a consultant I knew working at BHS to ask a few questions and she was kind enough to set up a conference call for me with the organization’s Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Chief Medical Information Officer (CMIO).

First, a little background about Berkshire Health Systems (BHS). BHS is a private, not-for-profit organization serving the Berkshire County region through a network of affiliates which include a 302-bed acute care community hospital, a 27-bed critical access hospital, a large VNA/home health program, a long-term care affiliate, and approximately 15 community physician practices.

Berkshire Medical Center (BMC), BHS’s flagship hospital, is one of only 10 hospitals in Massachusetts to have an electronic system in place that can significantly improve patient care and safety. This comprehensive electronic medical record (EMR) with computerized provider order entry (CPOE) represent major investments by BHS in its ongoing efforts to ensure the best care possible for their patients.

Over the past five years, BHS has invested approximately $15 million on creating and implementing the EMR system. This included the introduction of MEDITECH, PACS, online nursing documentation, and automated medication dispensing. About $1.5 million was invested in CPOE, which is expected to be in full use by January 2009 at both BMC and Fairview Hospital.

BHS expects to have a fully electronic medical record by the end of 2009. In the process, the system will increase availability and accessibility of information; reduce medication errors; gain operational efficiency; and capture and provide needed information for pay-for-performance and other external reporting requirements.

Implementation of this technology places BHS well ahead of the curve nationally, based on the HIMSS Analytics’ EMR Adoption Model. But, is there a potential downside to such a technologically advanced healthcare environment? To learn more, I spoke with Dr. Michael Blackman, Chief Medical Information Officer, and Joe Diver, Chief Information Officer, at Berkshire Health Systems.

Dr. Blackman said, “As the EMR becomes the primary source of patient information, it is critical that we provide access to that data 24/7/365.” So, what happens when a system goes down unexpectedly, or a scheduled downtime lasts for longer than was planned? Dr. Blackman continued, “PatientKeeper provides the medical staff continuous access to the record, from any location, even during downtime events.”

I wondered how BHS came to select PatientKeeper as a downtime solution. Well, they actually stumbled upon it quite accidentally, a couple of years ago. When their MEDITECH system was temporarily down, one of their medical staff discovered that he could still access patient data through the PatientKeeper application on his PDA. Once they realized this was possible, BHS decided to take it to the next level and use it as a formal downtime solution. BHS brought this idea to the vendor and PatientKeeper performed some further development of the product to prepare it for BHS’s downtime solution.

BHS was preparing to perform some extensive testing of the solution during their upgrade from MEDITECH CS 5.52 to 5.54, but they actually had to roll it out more quickly during an emergency situation. Joe Diver said, “A recent February upgrade landed Berkshire Health Systems into an extended downtime situation and with the rollout of the PatientKeeper Business Continuity solution, physicians were able to access the critical information required directly from any web browser or handheld device. Our physician users were very happy to have the solution ready.”

Berkshire Health Systems was already a customer of PatientKeeper, using it’s physician’s portal product to provide physicians access to patient data stored in the EMR. Diver says, “PatientKeeper’s solutions support and further enable the physician on the move. The physician’s job is difficult enough without all of the internal and external requirements and the added complexity of a hospital EMR. With the majority of the patient’s record in an electronic format, we have the ability to allow immediate access but without a computer in every nook & cranny of the hospital access is difficult. With the PatientKeeper Mobile Clinical Results running on a PDA or Smartphone, physicians can have immediate access to critical information.”

PatientKeeper applications can be run via the web portal or handheld devices. Click on the two links to see screen shots of both applications.

Although PatientKeeper offers a full suite of applications that support physicians throughout their entire day, customers can start with just a single application and add new capabilities as needed; all of their applications are tightly integrated with each other. And because their platform integrates with existing healthcare systems, there's no need to replace legacy systems.

PatientKeeper doubles as a downtime solution to help ensure that physicians and other users throughout a healthcare organization have access to all available clinical information during scheduled and unscheduled system downtime. Because PatientKeeper is logically and physically independent of the systems feeding it data, it does not share their software and hardware vulnerabilities. As a result, data can be easily retrieved during downtime, and is current up to the time the clinical information system went down.

Paul Brient, President and CEO of PatientKeeper, explains, “If you are a nurse or physician in a hospital trying to take care of patients while a core HIS system is down, having uninterrupted access to patient information can literally be lifesaving. Not only does HIS downtime slow down workflow for people used to working in an automated environment, it also introduces risk and creates many potential opportunities for making errors. With PatientKeeper Business Continuity, our customers have the redundancy they need to ensure physicians and patients stay connected.”

PatientKeeper applications will work with most of the major HIS vendors available in the market today. Peter Henderson, PatientKeeper’s VP of Marketing, told us that to date, “PatientKeeper has contracted with more than 10% of the acute care hospitals in the United States.” Of course my special interest is on the MEDITECH market, so I asked about PatientKeeper’s penetration in that segment of the market. Henderson continued, “We have also contracted with more than 12% of the MEDITECH customer base.”

So, for all of you MEDITECH sites out there, we asked Berkshire Health Systems what is the best piece of advice they have to offer other facilities who might be seeking a downtime solution. Their answer: “Just do it! It’s imperative to have a method in place for continuous access to critical patient information. There are a lot of downtime solutions available in the market, but the PatientKeeper Business Continuity solution works very nicely with MEDITECH as it supports and facilitates the same workflow your physicians are accustomed to.”

To learn more about PatientKeeper, please visit their web site at www.patientkeeper.com.

Personal Note: Special thanks to Brenda McConnell, “Consultant Extraordinaire” from CRH Consulting, Inc., for her assistance in coordinating the meeting with Berkshire Health Systems.