$1.8B IT Rollout Is Rx for Kaiser

Computerworld - Kaiser Permanente Health Plan Inc. last week announced a $1.8 billion project to deploy an automated medical records system for its 8.4 million members, its second attempt to use technology to eliminate paper-based charts and files.
Analysts said the new system, which is intended to be used by Kaiser's 11,000 physicians and their patients, would be the largest health care IT system ever developed outside the federal government in terms of cost, scale and scope.
Oakland, Calif.-based Kaiser, the largest nonprofit health maintenance organization in the U.S., plans to use software developed by Epic Systems Corp. in Madison, Wis., to store medical records electronically. Epic's software provides a repository that integrates all types of data, including patient charts, physician order entry forms, clinical notes, nursing documentation and pharmacy information.
Kaiser had previously worked with IBM to develop its own automated record system. David O'Grady, a Kaiser spokesman, said the HMO started that project in the mid-1990s because comprehensive off-the-shelf software didn't exist then. Versions of the internally developed system have been rolled out in states such as Colorado and Hawaii.
But Epic has developed its software to the point that Kaiser officials believed it would be more cost-effective to switch, O'Grady said. He wouldn't disclose what Kaiser has spent on the initial project but said press reports in the 1990s pegged the expected cost at close to $1 billion.
IBM spokesman John Bukovinsky said his company has worked with Kaiser on a number of successful projects and expects to continue to be involved in IT work at the HMO, which uses IBM's systems and its DB2 database.
Andy Wiesenthal, associate executive director of the Permanente Federation, the national governing organization for Kaiser's medical groups, said it's expected to take three years to fully roll out the new system to the health plan's facilities, located in nine states and the District of Columbia.
When it's completed, the system will let Kaiser's health care workers electronically access the records of any patient, Wiesenthal said. In addition, health plan members will be able to use the system via the Internet to schedule appointments, seek referrals or request prescription refills.
Kaiser hasn't finalized the system's topology, said Wiesenthal. But, he added, the electronic medical records will be housed in Kaiser's Corona, Calif., data center and tied to servers in the facility that will handle processing for different regional operations. Kaiser officials should decide by the end of this month whether to use thin-client terminals or PCs and workstations to provide access to end users,