Louisiana hospital to go paperless with McKesson

Lake Charles Memorial Hospital in Lake Charles, La., has begun transitioning its business and clinical information systems with the help of McKesson Provider Technologies in a three-year process at an estimated cost of $6 million.

When completed, the paperless system will allow Memorial patients to utilize one of its affiliate physicians or the service areas of the hospital and their health information will be accessible from any computer in the system, including the emergency room. McKesson said that redundancy of records will be reduced and information will be backed up in multiple locations to assure security and availability of records when accessing points in the Memorial healthcare system.

With McKesson’s Paragon community hospital information system and Practice Partner Patient Records EHR and practice management solution, the company said that both the hospital and its affiliated physicians have connection between laboratory and radiology orders between the practice and the hospital.

The initial phase, scheduled to begin in early 2009 and take approximately nine to 12 months to implement, will focus on the area of document imaging. Upon completion, the 391-bed Memorial will enjoy “a post-discharge electronic medical record.”