Excela Health, a non-profit healthcare network serving western Pennsylvania, will implement an electronic health record system for the more than 115 physicians in Excela Health Physician Practices (EHPP).

EHPP is a network of medical practices representing a variety of specialties located throughout Westmoreland County.

Excela Health will roll out an EHR from Chicago-based Allscripts-Misys Healthcare Solutions.

"Our strategy calls for finding ways to enable physicians to improve the quality of the services they deliver, simplify their lives, and to improve their bottom line, and we believe Allscripts will help us accomplish those objectives," said Otto Salguero, chief information officer of Excela Health. "Electronic health records eliminate the inefficiencies of the paper chart and provide 'best practice' guidelines, automated safety alerts, health management plans and other critical information where it's needed most, at the point of care."

Excela Health will offer Allscripts ePrescribe, a stand-alone, Web-based electronic prescribing solution, at no cost to all physicians affiliated with its hospitals to promote safer prescribing and encourage its physicians to adopt automated solutions.

Excela has also partnered with Allscripts to enable the organization's growing community of independent physicians to access patient visit documentation and other hospital information electronically in real-time.
 
Excela officials say their affiliated physicians can leverage this agreement to acquire Allscripts solutions for their practices.

"Virtually everything we do in our daily lives requires access to the right information at the right time, whether its online banking, financial investment decisions or even traffic conditions," said Glen Tullman, chief executive officer of Allscripts. "Yet in healthcare we expect physicians to make critical decisions without access to all the information they need.
 
This has to change and we're excited that Excela has taken a leadership role in providing their physicians and those in their community with better information, which will result in better patient care."