Pine Rest Christian Mental Health Services, which includes a psychiatric hospital and a variety of mental health services, is preparing for an Epic Systems electronic health record rollout.

Pine Rest’s board of directors has approved the multi-million-dollar capital investment, which was announced on Oct. 3.

Regarding the cost, Pine Rest executives call it a “significant investment.”  Financing will be a blend of longer-term debt, board designated funds as well as capital improvement dollars.

The go-live date is too early to tell, but executives are shooting for June 2018.

Headquartered in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Pine Rest provides services at clinics across Michigan and also in Central Iowa.

Epic EHRs are already used by some of Pine Rest’s partner hospitals, such as Metro Health – University of Michigan Health, Spectrum Health, Sparrow Health and Lakeland Health.

The goal is for Pine Rest patients to have their behavioral healthcare integrated with their physical care and to provide patients with access to both through MyChart, Epic’s patient portal.

“The head and the body belong together,” Epic founder and CEO Judy Faulkner, said in a statement. “This collaboration will help Pine Rest take care of the whole patient through both an integrated record and the improved interoperability they will gain with Care Everywhere.”

Pine Rest plans to connect with other hospitals, such as Mercy Health Saint Mary’s, through Great Lakes Health Connect. Epic’s interoperability platform, Care Everywhere, exchanges 2 million records per day with both Epic and non-Epic systems, according to Epic executives.

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