Four Federally Qualified Health Centers in Montana are poised to connect electronically.

RiverStone Health, which operates the largest FQHC in the state, serving residents in the Yellowstone valley area, is planning to implement a unified electronic medical records and practice management system from Westborough, Mass.-based eClinicalWorks.

Daniel Hillman, vice president of information systems, says the timeline for the rollout is one year.

The technology will link RiverStone Health's four FQHCs, which employ 69 healthcare providers. Clinicians have already begun training on the practice management system and will begin on the EMR in January, says Hillman. 

RiverStone Health Clinic provides family practice primary care in Billings, Mont., with satellite locations in Worden, Bridger and Joliet. Prior to June 2008, RiverStone Health did business as the Yellowstone City-County Health Department.
RiverStone Health is also home to Montana's only graduate medical education program, the Montana Family Medicine Residency.

"It is a complex group to consolidate," says Joseph Keel, MD, on the clinical faculty at RiverStone. Keel is the 'Super User' for the clinic and has been "tweaking" the EMR for his peers since RiverStone heard word they had received a high impact healthcare IT grant from the Department of Health and Human Services' Health Resources and Services Administration.
"We had all the pieces in place and the boards were all committed to the ongoing costs for maintaining an EMR but not the initial costs," said Hillman.

Roxanne Fahrenwald, senior vice president of clinical and educational services at RiverStone, said an EMR is important because "these systems are becoming the standard and our residents are required to learn to use EHR systems. This is an accreditation recommendation for residency programs in family medicine."

Keel has been working on making the EMR "more out-of-the-box friendly" so clinicians train with the one with which they will go live.

"eClinicalWorks trained us on the generic software, but it is bloated with stuff that isn't pertinent to primary care and how we work," he said.

RiverStone Health is also hosting the  system for three additional FQHCs in Montana: the Butte Community Health Center, Partnership Health Center in Missoula and the Cooperative Health Center in Helena.

"We can provide a more robust system as a group, and at a lower cost," Hillman said.

 Keel said the technology will help to meet the stringent reporting and billing requirements that apply to FQHCs, as well as ensure there is no interruption in patient care funding.