The first fruits of a collaboration between Salt Lake City-based Intermountain Healthcare and Kansas City, Mo.-based Cerner Corp. are being rolled out to two hospitals and 24 ambulatory care clinics, Cerner and Intermountain announced Thursday.
The new system, iCentra, combines Intermountain care models—including evidence-based best-practice guidelines, workflows and decision-support tools—with Cerner's electronic health record and financial system. The goal is to help organizations identify and track medical costs, services and outcomes specific to a particular care process.
Intermountain brings decades of experience using computers to improve care and lower costs to the partnership, while Cerner brings its health information technology development and marketing clout. The partners expect their combined strengths will yield improved processes for providers.
Perhaps most significantly, the new offering also may help the two companies win a plum contract with the U.S. Department of Defense. Cerner and Intermountain are teaming up to go after the contract, along with a host of other IT heavyweights.
“The launch of iCentra at multiple locations is a milestone event for Intermountain as we create a model system for health care delivery that focuses on providing the best possible care for our patient population at a sustainable cost,” said Marc Probst, Intermountain's chief information officer, in a release.
The two Utah hospital installations are at the 14-bed Bear River Valley Hospital in Tremonton, and the 135-bed Logan Regional Hospital in Logan.
The models will be incorporated into Cerner's Millenium family of products and demonstrated this spring to other Cerner customers, Cerner President Zane Burke said in an interview.
“Intermountain has, statistically, the highest quality outcomes at the lowest cost in the country,” Burke said. “As you enter an era where you have to have the lowest costs and highest quality, there is no better partner to work with than Intermountain.”
In 2013, Intermountain contracted to use Cerner's products across its 22 hospitals and 185 clinics. Then, last fall, Intermountain and Cerner announced they had reached a “strategic agreement” to assist in a Cerner bid, along with defense contractor Leidos, to win a prized procurement contract to supply an EHR to the Military Health System—a 10-year deal with an estimated $11 million price tag.
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