Adventist Health, an integrated healthcare delivery system headquartered in Roseville, Calif, will expand its electronic health record system across more than 130 outpatient clinic – which includes the largest California network of rural health clinics.

Besides its clinics, Adventist Health operates 18 hospitals and 14 home-care agencies in California, Hawaii, Oregon and Washington. It employs 20,000 people.

As an early adopter of healthcare information technology, Adventist Health started implementing Cerner's electronic health record across all hospital settings in 2001. Adventist Health home care agencies also implemented Cerner technology in 2009. The rollout of EHRs across Adventist clinics will complement the hospital EHR and home-care technology.

Increasing the interoperability between the ambulatory, acute and post-acute IT platforms will allow Adventist Health to provide enhanced care coordination as patients move throughout the Adventist system, officials say. With the inclusion of the outpatient medical record, clinicians will have instant, secure access to the complete chart.

"This IT expansion project will enable Adventist Health to maximize its patient-centric focus by delivering clinical information systems within a single platform, and thus providing optimal healthcare information across the patient's continuum of care," said Alan Soderblom, vice president and CIO of Adventist Health. "Cerner understands our strategy to provide clinicians with the best clinical data along with improving enterprise operational efficiency."

Kansas City, Mo.-based Cerner is collaborating with Adventist Health on implementing a number of other solutions that align long-term goals of digitizing patient care, including Cerner's Remote Hosting Option for data center services along with Discern nCode, computer-assisted coding, and the Cerner Patient Portal. Adventist Health is also working with Cerner on boosting its revenue cycle management.