"With Allscripts, the Electronic Health Record has finally become so user friendly that it has tipped the scale from being a burden to becoming a benefit," said Stanley Frochtzwajg, M.D., Chief Medical Officer of Community Memorial Health System. "National quality measures and the reimbursement tied to those measures are impacting physicians and hospitals alike. The only real way to comply with those measures and compete successfully with other health systems is by collecting and collating that data with an EHR."

Established in 2005 by the merger of the 240-bed Community Memorial Hospital and the 103-bed Ojai Valley Community Hospital, Community Memorial Health System is a not-for-profit organization that includes the two hospitals and nine Centers for Family Health in communities across Ventura County.

Community Memorial Health System will host the Allscripts solutions for 70 contracted physicians in its nine clinics, along with a pilot group of 12 community physicians, before offering it to other affiliated physicians within the community. In providing Allscripts for all of its affiliated physicians, Community Memorial Health System is taking advantage of recent changes to the federal Stark regulations that now allow hospitals to provide assistance to non-employed physicians in purchasing healthcare information technology.

Community Memorial physicians will be able to use the Electronic Health Record to access a "virtual patient record" that aggregates and harmonizes clinical information about a patient from all the information systems in use across the health system. This interoperability platform from dbMotion accomplishes the goal of one patient record, bridging gaps that often exist between hospital-based and office-based care and enabling physicians to access a comprehensive view of all data available about a patient.

Community Memorial also will deploy the Allscripts Clinical Quality Solution (CQS), which draws data from the Electronic Health Record and Practice Management system to automate the quality reporting requirements of government and payer-funded "pay-for-performance" programs. CQS, provided by Allscripts in partnership with TeamPraxis, also delivers real-time clinical decision support information to improve the quality of patient care.

Federal EHR Incentives Provided Urgency
Community Memorial acted now in order to be eligible for incentive payments of between $44,000 and $64,000 per physician that first become available from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in 2011, said Dr. Frochtzwajg.

Under provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), CMS will pay the incentives over five years to physicians who adopt and demonstrate "meaningful use" of an EHR.

"The time table for the federal reimbursements begins very soon, and in order for us to safely meet that deadline we realized we must begin our implementation now," Dr. Frochtzwajg said.

Allscripts Selected for its Ease of Use and Flexibility
Community Memorial Health System selected Allscripts following an exhaustive, year-long review of other products on the market by a team of IT and clinical specialists.

"After researching and vetting the various products available, it became very clear that the Allscripts Enterprise® v11 Electronic Health Record was not only the best on the market - with technology that connects information from disparate sources and features not available with any other system - but also the best EHR for our medical staff and hospital system," said Ron Sandifer, Vice President and Chief Information Officer of Community Memorial Health System. "Allscripts balances the flexibility of individual customization with the consistency of data point aggregation, provides extensive patient care guides that are invaluable for the physician, and combines ease of learning with the capacity for rapid implementation. Moreover, we were impressed by the pervasive culture of integrity, respect and service reflected by every one of the Allscripts people we've met."

Allscripts Chief Executive Officer Glen Tullman commented, "Community Memorial has joined the ranks of the nation's elite healthcare systems in recognizing that the time is ripe to provide affiliated and community physicians with real-time access to critical health information when and where it's needed. We look forward to a great partnership as we continue to deploy innovations like our Connect strategy with dbMotion, and our Clinical Quality Solution, which not only automates reporting but lets physicians proactively identify opportunities in their patient base for improving care and thereby lowering costs for our healthcare system."

Allscripts Solutions
The Allscripts Electronic Health Record automates clinical workflow and gives physicians immediate access to critical data from hospitals, labs, pharmacies, payers and patients. Healthcare providers can access the Electronic Health Record at any time, whether they are in the clinic, at the hospital or on-call at home. The Allscripts Practice Management solution with integrated Revenue Cycle Management combines billing and scheduling with integrated claims, remittance and eligibility capabilities in a single package. Together, they are used by thousands of physician groups across the U.S. to process more than 260 million claims annually and 500 million revenue cycle management transactions.

About Allscripts
Allscripts uses innovation technology to bring health to healthcare. More than 160,000 physicians, 800 hospitals and nearly 8,000 post-acute and homecare organizations utilize Allscripts to improve the health of their patients and their bottom line. The company's award-winning solutions include electronic health records, electronic prescribing, revenue cycle management, practice management, document management, care management, emergency department information systems and homecare automation. Allscripts is the brand name of Allscripts-Misys Healthcare Solutions, Inc. To learn more, visit www.allscripts.com.