VENTURA, CA – Back in January 2009, before the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was signed into law, Community Memorial Health System’s president and CEO Gary Wilde had a vision of aligning the not-for-profit with local physicians and creating a connected community within Ventura County, Calif. Less than two and a half years later, CMHS is slated to roll out its connectivity initiative in May.

A pilot group of 12 physicians across four physician offices went live with its AllScripts system in November 2010. CMHS is undergoing further testing and physician preparation to be ready for the May launch of the dbMotion Platform, according to Ron Sandifer, vice president and CIO of information systems for CMHS.

CMHS wanted to connect with physicians, regardless of whether they had an Allscripts EHR or not. In fact, many physician offices have various other EHR systems, said Stanley Frochtzwajg, MD, CMO of CMH. The dbMotion Platform captures, normalizes and distributes data among the disparate EHRs. "This will allow everybody in the area to readily and easily welcome the exchange of data for patient care," he said.

Thus far, 50 clinic physicians are in the queue to be connected and 50 physicians across 15 to 20 offices are interested in coming on board. Frochtzwajg noted that Ventura has many solo family practitioners, ranging in age from their 50s to their 70s. Physicians from adjacent towns have also expressed desire to connect to CMHS either through an Allscripts EHR or through the dbMotion Platform, he said. "We have enough physicians knocking at our door," Sandifer said, which eliminates the need for marketing.

CMHS reached out to its medical staff early in the vendor selection process, which included two site visits, Frochtzwajg said. Frochtzwajg writes the weekly medical staff newsletter and reported on project updates. "I've been very impressed by the power of the word," he said. "You can certainly develop an interest and an ongoing curiosity when you publish information on the progress of any particular project."

Frochtzwajg credits the snowball effect of physician interest to the early buy-in of the pilot physicians, an expert IT team, the creation of a successful product and a successful implementation. "The early enthusiasm and successes have bred more success, positivity and acceptance," he said. All this activity fulfills CMHS' ultimate goal of aligning local physicians to the health system, Frochtzwajg said.

In concert with the dbMotion Platform release, CMHS is rolling out its EHR to its nine clinics, going live one clinic a month. The health system plans to bring its Picis emergency department information system into the environment. With Community Memorial Hospital as the designated Kaiser Permanente hospital for Ventura, CMHS is examining ways to extend its connectivity to Kaiser Permanente, which deploys Epic Systems' platform for its HealthConnect EHR.

In addition, CMHS will meet with CalHIPSO (California Health Information Partnership and Services Organization), the federally designated regional extension center for all of California except for Los Angeles and Orange County, to present its connectivity initiative. With its advanced health information exchange infrastructure and roadmap, CMHS has much to offer the region and the state in the way of lessons learned and best practices.