MEMPHIS, TN – As healthcare organizations move to electronic medical records, facilities will face challenges in integrating more digital information into those systems.

Merging digital images into electronic records is more difficult than it appears, yet some providers are beginning efforts to pull as much information as possible to the point of care.

Memphis, Tenn.-based Methodist Healthcare, for example, is expecting to go live with its picture archiving and communication system this month. It's hoping that it will be able to integrate the images with its electronic medical record by the end of the year.

Methodist finished installation of its Cerner Corp. Millennium information system this past October. Now, after installing the PACS from GE Healthcare, it expects to save time locating radiology images, reduce space for film storage and give physicians access to the images.

"We want to take away the complexity," said Andy Fowler, CIO of the system, which operates six hospitals and offers a variety of ancillary services. "All of the presentation of information will be through one methodology. It provides ease of use for physicians; they don't like signing on to multiple systems."

Having everything electronic will help physicians eschew paper records or radiology images on film.

Methodist has been implementing a wide range of integrated Cerner applications, moving away from a multi-vendor, multi-platform approach. It's working now to improve access to information, both onsite and offsite.

A similar effort to integrate images with EMRs is under way at Oschner Clinic Foundation. The New Orleans-based organization operates two facilities and 24 clinics in Southeast Louisiana.

Oschner offers a portal that can provide a variety of information to physicians from its data repository.

"The repository lets doctors look at their appointment schedule and do things in the context of looking at the patient," said Lynn Witherspoon, MD, vice president and CIO. "We're very close to not storing any paper here at all."

Oschner, which operates a variety of Cerner applications, plans to store images in its central repository rather than a separate radiology data center.

Oschner plans to take digital images from cardiology and obstetrics departments, starting next month, and make them accessible to physicians.

"The biggest complicating factor is managing images within the environments of commercial vendors, access issues and data transmission issues," Witherspoon said. "We had to prepare the local and wide-area networks to deal with large image files being transported pretty much in real time."

Managing the images centrally eliminates the need for individual departments to maintain the systems and makes them more widely available.

"It's primarily a strategy to make images available to referring physicians," Witherspoon said. "We wanted to eliminate the dependence on physical media. Laying hands on a piece of X-ray film can be daunting, so that's a major factor. There's soft savings that are hard to quantify, and efficiencies to be gained within the practices themselves."