Butler Health System in Butler, Pa., has deployed a new patient portal to help its more than 200 affiliated physicians achieve “meaningful use.”

The platform and portal, developed by Boston-based PatientKeeper, will also serve as backup in the event of technology downtime, Butler officials said.

“If you look at the terms of meaningful use, the requirements center around physicians and having them using the systems,” said Paul Brient, CEO of PatientKeeper.  “Clinical staff needs to be utilizing HIT to enter in orders and accessing patient data through and electronic medical record.”

Brient said the platform was designed to promote physician participation.

“One of the things that we saw was the health system had a great infrastructure but some of the physicians weren’t using it. Butler needed HIT that physicians will want to use.”

That’s what Peter Schogel, director of the program management office at Butler Health System had in mind.

“Yes, we are trying to provide tools that are easier for our physicians to use,” he said. “We expect the new interface with patients and usability will encourage physician use.”

As part of the PatientKeeper solution, Butler Health will be implementing a number of solutions that include PatientKeeper’s portal, mobile clinical results software, business continuity and eSignature applications.

Butler Health is well into the implementation process and officials said that, so far, it’s been pretty easy going.

“We are about halfway through,” Schogel said. “Right now, we are working on some additional interfaces to bring in other info from some of the more rural physician practices equipped with EMRs. It’s been one of the smoother implementations. The challenges we have run into have been on our side, allocating resources and databases.”

Brient credited Butler for the smooth rollout. He said having organized management is one of the keys to a successful implementation experience.

“Having strong tech support, project management and system support from Butler have made this an almost turnkey solution,” he said.

In addition to achieving “meaningful use,” Schogel said the new system would be an IT insurance policy during other system upgrades.

“Along with stimulus funding, this is where we expect to see our ROI coming from,” he said.

David Garets, president and CEO of HIMSS Analytics, said managing business continuity in contrast to disaster-recovery is an important task and hasn’t seen very many providers take this approach.

“As we mover further into the paperless world, it’ll be interested to see how physicians deal with it,” said Garets.
“Taking CPOE out, the system is approximately a $500,000 to $1 million implementation for all physicians,” said Brient.

Butler Health has set up a mid-April goal to finish the first phase of the implementation process, and to meet the terms of “meaningful use.”

The system will be available to all of Butler’s member physician practices, but Schogel said the health system is also pushing those providers to adopt their own EMR systems as well.

“The PatientKeeper system will help our physician practices achieve ‘meaningful use,’ but they have incentives to adopt their own medical records,” said Schogel.