Faith Community Hospital Chooses Prognosis

It was a giant step forward for Faith Community Hospital that didn’t require a leap of faith:

According to Don Hopkins, Faith’s CEO, when the medical facility in Jacksboro, Texas embarked on an ambitious and comprehensive information systems upgrade, one choice became clear after careful product and service evaluations.

“We saw one team that could bring everything we needed to the table, not just in terms of features, but also in guarantees of quality and service,” Hopkins said, in announcing the agreement to implement a comprehensive system from Custom Software Systems, Inc. that includes ChartAccess, an electronic medical record (EMR) system from Prognosis Health Information Systems.

Designed by clinicians, ChartAccess Comprehensive EMR provides the user-friendly features that will help Faith Community quickly reap the benefits of technology. With screens that look like e-mail interfaces, the system is easy and intuitive to use, even for medical staff with limited computer experience.

“The end result will be enhanced performance across the board, from sharpened clinical capabilities to greater operational efficiencies,” Hopkins explained. “We expect a good return on investment, but more than that we expect to set a new standard of excellence that will benefit all our stakeholders—patients and staff members as well as our community as a whole.”

The final decision was the culmination of a more than one-year search process that began in early 2009, according to Marion Thurman, Faith’s Information Technology Officer. Identifying all the hospital’s potential options meant “a lot of legwork,” Thurman said, with extensive research and painstaking comparisons of products, features and even company philosophies. As choices were narrowed, the comparisons intensified, with Thurman investigating all possible scenarios.

“Once all the questions had been asked it became clear that Custom Software and Prognosis offered us a true partnership, rather than simply selling us a product. That comfort level was really a key difference.”

Thurman looks for significant improvements in operational areas, especially in reports. “We’re really pleased about what Custom Software can do to help us with RAC Audits,” she said, while noting that bar coding promises an expeditious path to the enhanced productivity promised by records digitization. “This is going to free up physical space, and free up staff for other important tasks.”

In addition, hospital leaders expect that Prognosis can help Faith Community meet the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s meaningful use requirements and qualify for the incentive funds associated with electronic records.

“For a long time, electronic medical records have been viewed as a technology exclusively designed for large urban hospitals or academic medical centers. We are making it possible for all hospitals to glean the highly-touted benefits associated with electronic records. We’re confident that we will be able to partner with Faith Community to quickly and effectively move toward the meaningful use of electronic records – and the improved clinical care associated with such use,” says Ramsey Evans, CEO of Prognosis.

“We’re very pleased to welcome Faith Community Hospital as our client,” CSS President DeWitt Rhaly said in making the joint announcement with Evans, “And we look forward to helping them as they transition to their exciting new era of automation”.