Located in Bolivar, Missouri, our team at Citizens Memorial Hospital/Citizens Memorial Health Care Foundation (CMH) serves eight counties and a population of more than 130,000 in a primarily rural area.
Beyond the walls of Citizens Memorial Hospital, our healthcare system includes 34 primary and specialty care clinics, seven long-term care facilities and other ancillary services.
But we know our communities rely on other resources as well, including the Ozarks Community Health Center (OCHC), a federally qualified health center (FQHC) that provides medical, dental and behavioral healthcare. To improve continuity of care and provide resources to our community, we collaborated with OCHC to allow them to use our MEDITECH EHR for their health IT needs. It may seem obvious why an FQHC would benefit from collaborating with a larger healthcare organization like CMH, but our organization and our patients have also benefited greatly from this collaboration.
While OCHC has maintained its status as an independent organization, it has an agreement with CMH whereby we provide all of its technical resources, including our MEDITECH EHR. Like all of our clinics, OCHC receives dedicated IT support from Citizens' existing IT staff. This means they will receive the same technical benefits and resources as the clinics that are a part of Citizens Memorial Hospital.
To prepare for the launch of this partnership, we created workflows to meet the clinic's needs and built out OCHC in MEDITECH as a facility, allowing their various locations to be included in the location directory.
All of the vital information that OCHC teams need to access is there because patients need to move fluidly, whether they go from OCHC to CMH to long-term care or anywhere else in the healthcare system. This integration provides us with more information about our patients and our patient population as a whole.
The setup in the system has OCHC built out as a facility with five locations including a mobile unit. We share an enterprise medical record number, but OCHC has its own MRN and account numbers. The facility ensures separation when needed for security or financial reasons, and provides the flexibility to activate only the modules they need.
The biggest benefit for CMH is that we have a more complete picture of the care our patients receive. If they are seen at an OCHC site, we can see all of that information. Then, when one of our clinicians sees the patient, they have a more complete medical history, which helps inform decisions and prevent unnecessary repeated tests.
This also provides a better patient experience as well, as patients can use one patient portal whether they are receiving care in a clinic or the hospital. This eliminates the need to remember a separate login and password and gives patients peace of mind knowing that their entire care team is on the same page.
Strong continuity of care and ongoing communication is important for any patient but it is especially helpful for vulnerable patients facing social determinants of health or trying to overcome health equity issues.
Dental care in particular is a vital service that OCHC provides, as many of these areas have very few dental resources. Oral health is integral to overall health, but the area faces a variety of socioeconomic challenges that make dental services in particular difficult to access. Providing dental care truly demonstrates the impact that an FQHC can have.
OCHC uses a dental-specific EMR that integrates with MEDITECH through patient demographics, appointment scheduling and office notes. Although OCHC uses a separate dental-specific solution, they can share details about the patient's dental care in their notes in MEDITECH, providing CMH with patient information they wouldn't otherwise have, right in their EHR.
Additionally, OCHC provides dental care at one of CMH Foundation's long-term care facilities and plans to expand the services to other locations. Travel resources for long-term care patients to receive dental care can be limited, and not having to arrange transportation to a dental office is a big win for everyone.
Through this relationship, OCHC has benefited from the technical and IT resources that CMH can provide, and CMH has benefited from more thorough patient information and improved continuity of care for our patients. Given the enormous financial challenges facing rural health care organizations in general and FQHCs in particular, these types of mutually beneficial arrangements are well worth considering for health systems.
Tune into the MUSE Views podcast to hear how Citizens Memorial Hospital strategizes their data collecting and sharing through the power of MEDITECH Expanse and CommonWell.
