MINNEAPOLIS –  The team at Allina Hospitals and Clinics is freshly done with a 3 1/2 year electronic health record and revenue cycle system rollout that insiders say has changed everything for caregivers and for patients. The $250 million project spanned eight hospitals and 65 clinics, and it won Allina the coveted Davies Award from the Healthcare Information Management and Systems Society.

A group from Allina will pick up the award at the annual HIMSS conference Feb. 25-28.

Allina, which cares for patients throughout Minnesota, and western Wisconsin, implemented technology developed by Wisconsin-based Epic Systems. It made it its own by tailoring it to its specific needs and naming it “Excellian.”

Susan Heichert, Allina’s director of the Excellian implementation, has had a 25-year career of rolling out technology like this at other healthcare systems. This one was more challenging, she said, and unique for her because it included both hospitals and clinics.

Heichert and the rest of the Allina implementation team are already looking to what comes next  – how to make best use of all the data they are collecting and how to link with other healthcare systems in their region. However, there are three more hospitals to transform – one of them an eye hospital, which makes things a little different from the others, says Heichert, and another a hospital that Allina will build in the first quarter of 2009.