Kaiser Completes EHR Implementation

Three Kaiser Permanente hospitals in northern California recently completed implementation of electronic health records, completing the organization's enterprise-wide inpatient and ambulatory adoption of EHRs that started with the first implementation in 2004.

As part of the initiative, Kaiser went live with personal health records software in 2007, and more than 3 million members logged in 27 million times in 2009 alone, according to the Oakland, Calif.-based organization. Outpatient EHR implementation in 431 facilities was complete in April 2008.

Twenty-four of Kaiser’s 36 hospitals have attained Stage 7, the highest level, on the HIMSS Analytics scale to measure IT adoption. Kaiser expects many, if not all, of the remaining hospitals to reach Stage 7 during 2010. Kaiser’s core EHR vendor is Epic Systems Corp., Verona, Wis. From Health Data Management.