Allscripts chosen as West Penn Allegheny's clinical IT solutions provider

Oct 1 2009

Allscripts (Nasdaq: MDRX) announced today a strategic agreement with West Penn Allegheny Health System (WPAHS) naming Allscripts as West Penn Allegheny's preferred provider of clinical IT solutions across its network of hospitals and owned physician practices.

As part of the agreement, WPAHS will expand its current deployment of the Allscripts Electronic Health Record (EHR) from 165 physicians to all 645 of the health system's employed physicians. Additionally, Alle-Kiski Medical Center in Natrona Heights will implement the Allscripts Emergency Department Information System (EDIS) to automate administrative and patient care processes at both its main campus and its affiliated Citizens Ambulatory Care Center in New Kensington, PA. WPAHS also will implement the Allscripts discharge planning solution in five hospitals to streamline and automate the process of referring discharged patients to post-acute facilities for further treatment. And the health system will deploy the Allscripts patient portal, providing patients an online portal to communicate with their providers.

Comprised of some of the oldest and best-known names in health care in Western Pennsylvania, WPAHS includes two tertiary and four community hospitals with a total of more than 2,000 beds. Allegheny General Hospital serves as the Pittsburgh clinical campus for the Drexel University College of Medicine in Philadelphia, and The Western Pennsylvania Hospital serves as the clinical campus for Temple University School of Medicine in Philadelphia. The health system, which admits more than 80,000 patients into its hospitals each year, also owns a network of 92 physician practices, employing 645 primary care and multi-specialty physicians.

"West Penn Allegheny is committed to building a fully integrated healthcare system in which all providers have comprehensive, real time electronic access to vital patient information. We believe Allscripts has the clinical portfolio of solutions and resources to help us deliver on that vision," said John Foley, Chief Information Officer of WPAHS. "Allscripts will facilitate an electronic dialogue among all the members of a patient's clinical team regardless of their location and help us achieve a truly integrated patient care model."

As part of this strategic enterprise agreement, WPAHS has agreed to give first preference to the entire Allscripts solutions portfolio.

"West Penn's decision to provide preferred status to Allscripts for our clinical solutions across its enterprise is significant because it demonstrates how leading healthcare systems will address the integrated clinical care required in the future and how they are building an interconnected system of health today - something that we believe is not only compelling but necessary to advance our national healthcare objectives," said Glen Tullman, Chief Executive Officer of Allscripts. "For Allscripts, the endorsement by a respected health system is further evidence of the importance of having a full suite of solutions for hospitals and physician offices, anchored by our comprehensive Electronic Health Record."

The Allscripts Electronic Health Record brings WPAHS physicians access to patient information when and where they need it - at the hospital, in their offices or while on-call at home. Allscripts automates everyday clinical tasks such as prescribing and refilling medications, ordering and reviewing tests, and documenting patient care, while making the process more efficient and safer than ever before. An easy-to-use and highly customizable solution popular with both primary care and specialty physician practices, the Electronic Health Record features robust clinical tools that support safe medical practices, including health maintenance alerts, clinical decision support, and automated drug safety checking.

Allscripts Emergency Department Information System electronically streamlines processes for the entire Emergency Department, including tracking, triage, nurse and physician charting, disposition and reporting. Integrated features include "one-click" access to individual patient charts, the ability to view multiple charts simultaneously, to track the entire patient treatment experience at a single glance, and alerts that notify the clinician of overdue treatment times, medication conflicts and conflicting orders.

In addition to providing the core Electronic Health Record to its physicians, WPAHS will provide view-only access to key parts of the Electronic Health Record for all employed caregivers in the system's hospitals. That functionality ensures that hospital caregivers will have access to the medication history, health issues, allergies and other critical information about patients admitted to the hospital by the primary & specialty care groups.

"An effective electronic health record is critical to maximizing both the efficiency and coordination of our clinical operations across the System and to providing the highest quality of care for our patients. With Allscripts' state-of-the-art software and technology, our capabilities in this regard will be significantly advanced," said David Chuirazzi, M.D., an emergency medicine physician at Allegheny General Hospital and Medical Director of West Penn Allegheny's electronic medical record initiatives.

WPAHS also will implement the web-based Allscripts discharge planning solution, a "software-as-a-service" application that eliminates the cumbersome and costly process of case managers manually phoning and faxing to secure post-acute care services one provider at a time. Allscripts enables a detailed electronic referral to be sent to selected locations across its proprietary network of 90,000 providers, and interested facilities reply, often within minutes. The patient and family then receive a discharge packet that details their facility choices, making their decision more transparent and informed. The solution will enable the referral of patients to regional post-acute facilities that meet WPAHS's quality thresholds.

To improve patient-provider communications, WPAHS physicians will be given the option of providing Allscripts Patient Portal, which enables patients to make appointment requests, renew prescriptions, view test results and conduct other common tasks on-line.