Mental health center banking on ease of new records system

Alex Simone, St. Joseph News-Press, Mo.
·2 min read

Jul. 4—Family Guidance Center has introduced a new system for maintaining medical records, and the expectation is that it will improve ease of access for employees and patients.

The change was made with the start of a new fiscal year Saturday.

One of the biggest considerations when looking at new options for electronic medical records is having an online-based system that will make it easier to work externally, as opposed to being housed on a local server like Family Guidance's old EMR system, co-CEO Kristina Hannon said.

"The way health care is moving, it's more and more about collaboration and integration," she said. "We have to have a system that can easily send what we call CDS — continuity of care — documents that can send information and correspondence to other providers or other health care providers."

While it is expected to be an advantage in the long run, Hannon is keeping an eye on potential hurdles. One of the main considerations is making sure all employees have access to the proper programs, she said.

Each staff member receives access to certain aspects based on his or her role, but that also means some might not originally have clearance for everything, Hannon said.

"We have to credential and privilege out every part of the electronic record. "There is the possibility we, in doing that, we made a mistake and so somebody may not be able to access a part of the record, one of our staff can't access a part of the record that they're supposed to. We can fix that quickly, but that does create a little bit of a bump in the road for the consumer."

Once program details are smoothed out on the care provider side, a further evolution will be expanding options so patients can view their information externally, whether on the computer or through an app, Hannon said.

"We're hoping that next year we will be at the place where people will be able to have an app that they can just put on their smartphone," she said. "(Then) they can have that immediate access to message their provider to schedule that service, to pull up their notes, to show other health care providers."

Alex Simone can be reached at alex.simone@newspressnow.com. Follow him on Twitter at @NPNOWSimone.