Leading the nation in information technology

Rural Health
Leading the nation in information technology
Drumright Regional Hospital
Darrel Morris believed the new Cerner information
technology system would work, but the staff at
Drumright Regional Hospital wasn’t so sure.
Most of the nurses at the critical access hospital
in Drumright, Okla. had never worked with an EMR
and were “terrified,” said Morris, the hospital’s CEO.
“We’re positioned better
than any critical access
hospital that I know.”
Darrel Morris
CEO
Client at a Glance
Location: Drumright, Okla.
Beds: 15
Cerner solutions:
Nursing orders, physician
order entry, task list,
nursing and physician
documentation, electronic
medication administration
record, surgery scheduling,
pharmacy, clinic EMR
But after a few days, the staff grew to like the new
technology, asking when do “we get everything,
every piece of this live?” Morris said. “They’re
very excited.”
Drumright, a town of 2,900 about 40 miles west
of Tulsa had a community hospital for about 40
years until it closed in 2001. When Drumright
Regional Hospital re-opened in March 2005,
everything in the 15-bed facility was on paper.
Then, after receiving a grant from Oklahoma
State University, Drumright started looking for an
electronic medical record (EMR).
Morris said he did some site visits, but it was
impossible to find a critical access hospital with
a full complement of healthcare information
technology (HIT) solutions.
And now, with the integrated Cerner system,
Drumright may be one of the most technologically
advanced critical access hospitals in the country.
“We’re positioned better than any critical access
hospital that I know,” he said. “A lot of people are
amazed that we have” an EMR.
Three things attracted Morris to the Cerner suite:
the affordable cost, the fact that Cerner hosts the
system and the offering itself.
Remote hosting
Critical access hospitals like Drumright are in rural
areas and often have limited staff. Unlike its urban
counterparts, Drumright does not have its own
information technology (IT) department or
staff members.
Many HIT solution providers would have required
Drumright to house a server and to handle
Cerner Corporation 2800 Rockcreek Parkway, Kansas City, MO 64117 800.927.1024
upgrades and maintenance—not Cerner. With the
Cerner system, all of the patient information and
the solutions themselves are protected in state-ofthe-art data centers.
In the long run, Morris said it is more expensive for
Drumright to maintain its own server.
“We didn’t want the responsibility of housing a server
and keeping [the system] updated,” Morris said.
“We just didn’t really have the technical resources to
do it.”
True integration
Cerner’s level of integration was also a selling
point. “Other EMRs are, in reality, glorified
documentation systems,” Morris said, “and anyone
can scan images.”
In contrast, Cerner offers critical access hospitals
like Drumright, truly integrated solutions.
Paper charges get missed. Staff members forget
to check the proper box or to turn in charge sheets.
But with the Cerner system, when a clinician
performs a service or places an order, “the charge
is created automatically, so there’s no paper,”
Morris said.
“When a nurse performs an order on the floor, the
charge is generated and interfaced back to our
billing system,” he said. “It’s less likely to
be missed.”
www.cerner.com
The integrated system began to pay immediate
dividends. Historically, the clinic associated with
Drumright Regional Hospital, has had between
$40,000 and $55,000 a month in revenue.
With the Cerner system, Drumright will be able
to pull the information in real time, a central
capability for organizations participating in the
Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI) and
other quality improvement programs.
Since go-live, “we’ve been up by $5,000 to
$10,000 a month consistently with the same
number of patients,” Morris said. “We’re doing a
better job of capturing charges.”
Implementing the EMR also has positioned
Drumright to receive federal incentive dollars
under the economic stimulus law, known formally
as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
Cerner has “the resources necessary and the
applications to get us where we wanted to go,” he
said, “what we envisioned as an EMR.”
Customization
Key Benefits
<
Increased clinic revenue
by $5,000 to $10,000
per month through
integrated billing
<
aved on system
S
maintenance and
upgrades with remote
hosting
<
Incentives from the federal government should
help close what could become a technology gap
between urban and rural health centers. Morris
disputes the idea that the quality of care is better
at these larger facilities.
Improved timeliness of
quality reports
Drumright also liked the adaptability of the Cerner
system—the fact that Cerner could tailor the EMR
“We feel like we provide really good care,” he said.
to meet the hospital’s specific needs.
But “we don’t have all the resources to document
“We viewed Cerner as having the resources and
it… we don’t have all the bells and whistles that
not just on the software, but the resources as
most people have had in the past [to make] sure
far as employees and the knowledge base to do
that they document their quality improvement.”
things that we want to change,” Morris said.
ePrescribing
Quality reporting
Morris says he is looking forward to using the
quality reporting capabilities of the integrated
system. The paper-generated quality reports,
which Morris currently presents to his board, have
information that is 12 to 15 months old.
Another feature of the integrated Cerner system,
ePrescribing, has been a hit at the hospital’s
clinic. With a single click, all of the doctor’s orders
automatically go to the patient’s pharmacy. No
calls, faxes or illegible, hand-written scripts.
“It’s been tremendous,” Morris said.
Location of Critical Access Hospitals
Information Gathered Through June 30, 2010
Only 10 percent of critical
access hospitals—including
Drumright—use HIT.
Legend
Alaska
and Hawaii
not to scale
Sources: US Census Bureau, 2009; CMS Regional Office,
ORHP, and State Offices Coordinating with MRHFP, 2010.
()=N
Critical Access Hospital (1,315)
Metropolitan County
Nonmetropolitan County
State Not Eligible or Not Participating
*Note: Core Based Statistical Areas are current as of the December 2009 update.
Nonmetropolitan counties include micropolitan and counties outside of CBSAs.
Produced By: North Carolina Rural Health Research and Policy Analysis Center, Cecil G.
Sheps Center for Health Services Research, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
cs03_112_11_v3
Cerner Corporation 2800 Rockcreek Parkway, Kansas City, MO 64117 800.927.1024
www.cerner.com