PHILADELPHIA – The City of Philadelphia has tapped eClinicalWorks to help improve the continuity of care for the city’s Department of Public Health. The Westborough, Mass.-based company will outfit 230 providers across 20 primary care and correctional clinics with a preventative-care oriented EHR to improve the quality of care through reporting capabilities and the ability to share data between facilities.
 
“As a provider of health care services, we must meet ARRA/HITECH federal requirements; the eClinicalWorks suite allows us to meet these requirements in a timely way,” said Donald Schwarz, MD, Philadelphia's deputy mayor and commissioner for public health. “By deploying eClinicalWorks, we will establish an innovative electronic health record that will support the integration of health services provided by the Philadelphia Department of Public Health and the Philadelphia Prison System."

He added that "the single, unified health record will enhance providers’ ability to access and share complete and accurate information, improve the coordination of care for patients, families and other providers.”

[See also: eClinicalWorks announces EMR contract with Utah Medical Association.]
 
Philadelphia’s Department of Public Health and the Philadelphia Prison System will utilize eClinicalWorks comprehensive electronic health records (EHR) solution for its clinics, combining electronic medical records, practice management, patient portal, interoperability, mobile and messaging capabilities— all unified and linked via a single database.

In addition, eClinicalWorks Electronic Health eXchange (eEHX) will serve as a hub providing physicians with improved access to patients’ health information and allowing them to exchange data more effectively, with each other and eventually connecting to health department registries, including those for smoking and vaccines.

“We conducted a long and thorough search for a partner to aid us in providing the platform to reach our program goals in the areas of clinical services delivery, data and knowledge management and data-based public health policy formulation," said Gordon Zeis, Philadelphia’s EHR program director. "eClinicalWorks was chosen due to its commitment to municipal partnership, data and knowledge integration, experience with ambulatory health and correctional facilities as well as their entrepreneurial spirit.”

[See also: Public health information network to grow in importance.]

As part of eClinicalWorks’ comprehensive EHR solution, Philadelphia Department of Public Health and Philadelphia Prison System providers will have access to the following:
 

• eClinicalWorks EMR/PM enables clinicians to manage patient flow, immediately access patient records in-house or remotely, electronically communicate with the referring physicians and securely send consult notes and clinical data;
• eClinicalWorks Patient Portal allows patients and doctors to communicate securely via the Internet;
• eBO performs clinical and financial analytics;
• eClinicalMessenger acts as a messaging service that utilizes Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP) to enable physician practices to send messages, in batches or singularly, to patients for aspects of care. This includes appointment reminders, lab results, diagnostic imaging and statements;
• eClinicalWorks P2P provides practice-to-practice, provider-to-provider communications in a peer-to-peer environment; and
• eEHX serves as a hub to provide physicians with improved access to patients’ health information and allow them to exchange data more effectively with each other.

“The City of Philadelphia is embarking on a groundbreaking initiative that will lay the foundation for future projects,” said Girish Kumar Navani, CEO and co-founder of eClinicalWorks. “eClinicalWorks has extensive experience with public health departments, making this a great fit. Our prevention-oriented EHR has already demonstrated improved quality of care and we are pleased to have been selected by the City of Philadelphia.”