What do Cleveland Clinic, Allina Hospitals & Clinics, and SSM Health Care out of St. Louis, Mo., have in common? All three health systems implemented Epic's electronic medical record (EMR) system and Hyland Software's enterprise document management solution (EDM), OnBase. While all three have their own health IT goals and vision, the strategy to implement their Epic EMR included the deployment of an EDM solution.

University Hospitals, a large health system serving Northeast Ohio, has laid out a very strategic health IT plan. UH, which includes a major academic medical center, community hospitals, outpatient health centers, outpatient surgical centers, urgent care centers, cancer centers and other facilities, has been rolling out its inpatient electronic medical record system in a measured fashion.

With the big push to implement EHRs and EMRs, and meet meaningful use criteria in 2011, many hospitals are deploying enterprise content management (ECM) applications to augment their electronic patient records.

While this is currently the most visible use of ECM applications, it should not be the only use by hospitals. The economic downturn has pummeled hospitals and the stalled recovery promises more hard times. Hospitals need to view their health IT initiatives strategically. Health IT initiatives should be leveraged for future needs and across the enterprise.

There's a big push in the healthcare industry for hospitals to deploy core IT systems -- electronic medical records, PACs, practice management, cardiology -- to enable more efficient, higher quality care. Once those systems are in place, the next step is to ensure that as much clinical information is fed into those systems to make them optimally efficient and present a comprehensive view of each patient from a clinical and financial perspective.

The HITECH Act has brought health IT to the center of our 21st century healthcare delivery system transformation. What's getting the most attention, as we all know, is the meaningful use of electronic health records. While EHRs are certainly a core health IT system in hospitals and large physician groups, there are other applications out there that are also core, if not complementary. One of those applications is enterprise content management (ECM).