Two of the 11 hospitals at the NYC Health & Hospitals system are running their new electronic health record systems after a pair of “go lives” Friday night and Saturday morning, an organization spokesman said.
Elmhurst Hospital Center and Queens Hospital Center were the first to convert to the new EHR, part of an information technology upgrade that is expected to take six years and cost $764 million to complete. Primary EHR vendor Epic Systems of Verona, Wis., reportedly will receive $302 million of that.
Spokesman Ian Michaels said Epic staff were working Saturday morning before dawn. About 900 Epic staffers were on duty, he said. "There were minor issues, but they were dealt with right away.”
Michaels confirmed that CEO Dr. Ram Raju and the administrative staff were very pleased with the implementation, which took place while 700 patients were in-house at the hospitals.
The contract and initial installation received an unprecedented level of media scrutiny, thanks in part to the system's size, its public ownership, an early contract dispute and more recently blog postings by an anonymous, self-described whistle-blower, and coverage by the New York Post that relied heavily on unnamed sources.