Banner Health to switch to Cerner for electronic health records in two acquired hospitals

Banner Health will install Cerner for electronic health records software at two hospitals they recently acquired from the University of Arizona by 2018, the healthcare provider announced. The 28-hospital integrated healthcare system already uses Cerner EHR in its other facilities.

The move, which scraps a $115 Epic system installed at the Banner-University Medical Center Tucson and Banner-University Medical Center South, will save them money and ensure better quality of care, said Banner Health CIO Ryan Smith.

"There's significant cost savings by consolidating these two systems down to our single system," Smith said. "Even taking into account the sizable investment that the former organization had made in that Epic environment, the structure of our relationship with Cerner is actually very cost effective for us to make this migration."

[Also: Banner Health earns $263 million, closes on University of Arizona Health acquisition]

He pointed out there would be significant operating cost around system support and disparate staff to support a system like that's different from what the rest of the organization is using.

"From the cost side of the equation, it makes really good business sense for us to do this migration," he said.

Having all hospitals on the same EHR will also benefit a key component of Banner Health's approach to care, he added.

"Part of our operating success really entails driving as much standardization as possible to operate most efficiently, safely with the highest quality possible," Smith explained. "You can't do that if you're doing things in a lot of different ways across your various care sites."

Over the years, he says, Banner has devoted a lot of time and attention to standardizing care.

"In essence, our whole IT organization is built around support of a highly centralized, highly consolidated, highly integrated business and clinical operations of the company," he says. "And, therein really lies the answer to why we really wanted integrated electronic health record systems."

[Also: Banner, Montefiore, Partners see big savings in Pioneer ACO program, while others overspend]

When Banner acquired the two Tucson hospitals, they had been operating with their Epic system for about two years. There had been reports of cost overruns mostly attributed to delays in implementation.

The UA board of directors reported in April 2014 a $6.8 million loss, which it attributed to physicians devoting time learning how to use the new system and also a decrease in patient volumes.

Steve Lynn, former chair of the UA Health Network Board of Directors was quoted in the Arizona Daily Star as saying the migration to Cerner would be easier than installing the Epic EHR had been.

"Obviously there was pain and suffering. But the good news is that there's enough similarity between the two," Lynn told the Arizona newspaper. "It is much more difficult to go from non-electronic to electronic than from one electronic system to another."

The decision for Banner did not boil down to whether Epic was better than Cerner or vice-versa.

As Smith put it, it was all about standardization. It was vital for the organization to have everyone on the same platform.

"Part of our operating success really entails driving as much standardization as possible to operate most efficiently, safely with the highest quality possible, and you can't do that if you're doing things in a lot of different ways across your various care sites," he said. "In essence, our whole IT organization is built around support of a highly centralized, highly consolidated, highly integrated business and clinical operations of the company."

Another critical factor to care at Banner Health, Smith said, is clinical decision support.

"We have implemented within our server system vast decision support rules that assist our clinicians and physicians in providing really highest quality care," he said.

At the Tucson hospitals there had been little clinical decision support implemented. It had been in the plan to add it over time, but it had not yet been implemented.

"That's another opportunity for us to highly leverage those many thousands of clinical decision support rules in that care setting as well," Smith said.

This first appeared on Healthcare IT News. It has been edited.