Electronic Medical Record (EMR) integration is a top priority in Epic River’s development plan because it creates a better experience for patients, caregivers, and administrators. These deep integrations allow organizations to pull and push information to and from the EMR, avoiding inefficient duplicate data entry and maintaining data integrity. We now fully integrate with Epic and AthenaHealth, with aggressive plans for more integrations in the future.
The healthcare IT and EMR landscapes weren’t always so innovative. In the 1990s and early 2000s, most organizations utilized an array of systems to meet their IT needs. There was one platform for the lab, another for charting, another for billing, and registration, while many departments still used paper and fax machines. These systems were duct-taped together with an assortment of HL7 interfaces capable of communicating limited information. Often, the information needed to be manually entered two or three times into different systems leading to errors, large-scale inefficiency, and loss of data integrity.
Throughout the 2000s and 2010s, organizations began implementing enterprise solutions as a “single source of truth,” hoping to avoid the problems and limitations that come from a collection of systems. Epic, Cerner, AthenaHealth, and others developed comprehensive products capable of supporting charting, imaging, registration, billing, labs, pharmacies, and more in a single platform.
For better or worse, the dust has settled for most organizations. Caregivers are trained and comfortable using their enterprise EMR, billing offices collected their legacy AR and shut off their legacy system, and executive leadership is firmly entrenched behind its single-source IT strategy. How, then, do organizations innovate and develop new programs when they are reliant on a single system that might not support their needs? The answer is direct integration.
Epic River’s EMR integrations with Epic’s App Orchard and AthenaHealth’s Marketplace don’t just make business sense, they’re creating better experiences for patients, caregivers, and administrators.
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