ISANTI, MN – The Northern Minnesota Network, a consortium of three Federally Qualified Health Centers that provide healthcare services to the uninsured, underinsured, migrant and seasonal farm workers in rural areas of Minnesota and eastern North Dakota, is closing the chapter on an electronic medical record implementation project.

The Northern Minnesota Network, or NMN, is made up of Migrant Health Services Inc., Cook Area Health Services (which operates as Scenic River Health Services) and Sawtooth Mountain Clinic. Together they operate 17 clinic sites.

Two problems the network hoped to solve through implementing healthcare information technology were timely access to patient’s medical records, and tracking and managing medical information for a transitory and widely scattered patient population. The network’s implementation was funded by a variety of sources including state and private grants, but the largest source of funding came from the government.

“Our patients deserve the same level of healthcare that others have that have full healthcare. It is great that we can even the playing field for our patients who have little or no insurance,” said Jackie Moen, the project manager and director for the NMN.

Before the sites could go forward with their EHR implementation, they first had to all make the move to a single practice management solution – GE Healthcare’s Centricity.

Moen said this move wasn’t, a totally new thing for them because they had all previously been using a PM system. "The reason that we chose GE was really based on the clinical functions. We liked it because it was one platform for both a PM and an EHR.”