'Aggressive schedule' set for St. John's Genesis Project

In 2004, the Sisters of Mercy Health System, which includes Springfield’s St. John’s Health System, began a project that would take care of fragmented information systems while also providing cutting-edge technology to patients and staff.

“This project is about making changes that will improve how we care for our patients,” said Micki Struckhoff, vice president of systems integration with the Genesis Project.

An ‘aggressive schedule’

The Genesis Project is a four-year effort that individual health systems within the Sisters of Mercy Health System are working to implement incrementally.

Software from Epic Systems Corp. encompasses the majority of the project, including clinical software and billing and revenue systems.

Epic has recently been put into place at nationally recognized health systems such as Cleveland Clinic and Kaiser, according to Jim Budzinski, senior vice president and chief financial officer with St. John’s.

“Just recently, in the last four to five years, this technology has evolved and now is the time to move into these systems,” he said.

The business system portion of the software is the Lawson Enterprise, Resource and Planning System.

The Epic installation cost is $452 million for the entire Sisters of Mercy Health System, and the Lawson installation will cost an estimated $80 million, according to St. John’s officials. Local costs were not available.

Currently, the finance system is the only component in place at St. John’s Health System, but major changes are expected in the next two years.

The supply chain system will be implemented in February, followed by the human resources system in October.

Then in early 2008, St. John’s will begin implementing the electronic health record and billing system in clinics.

Those systems will be implemented in the Springfield hospital by the end of 2008.

Once the four-year system initiative is finished for Sisters of Mercy, full systems will be implemented at St. John’s five regional hospitals.

“This is an incredibly aggressive schedule,” said Ronnie Brownsworth, senior vice president with St. John’s and an accountable executive with the Genesis Project. “The amount of work that it takes with a system our size is incredible.

“But you look at what they can do for you and you say, ‘I wish I had them yesterday.’”

Each individual health system within Sisters of Mercy has an accountable executive such as Brownsworth on site to help lead the implementation.

Struckhoff noted that Sisters of Mercy is working to ensure a seamless transition to Genesis.

During the switch, each computer will be on generator power and will also have battery backup to protect against system crashes and lost data.

Improving efficiency

Installing new, centralized systems will improve the efforts of each department in the St. John’s system, Brownsworth said, because as it stands, multiple hardware and software brands are being used throughout the health system, sometimes making communication difficult.

“We’ve had to create interfaces so they can talk to each other,” he said. “But since they weren’t built to do that, it’s kind of like forcing people together to talk who don’t like to talk to each other.”

For example, in the business functions of the health system, there is a human resources system, a separate time and attendance system and another system for payroll.

Information from each of those has to be manually connected to the finance system so that expenses can be tracked. The result, Brownsworth said, is inefficiency.

“We’re changing that out and putting in an HR system that is fully integrated,” he said.

“It has information about employees, time and attendance information is

automatically put into it, and then it

automatically feeds the payroll system so that it pays all the employees and automatically populates our finance system so that we know how our salaries are as far as our expense structure on our finance sheet,” Brownsworth added.

Additional changes include standardizing the supply chain management system ,which will allow St. John’s employees to automatically request and receive approvals, pay for and have items delivered without going into several different systems.

Connecting the dots

The clinical system will connect each step of a patient’s care so that there will no longer be gaps in patient history.

“What we’re trying to do is make sure that when a patient gets to that point of needing care, the information about them and what they’ve had done is available so people don’t make decisions in a vacuum without information that could have been most helpful for them,” Brownsworth said.

With Genesis, when a patient is hospitalized, medications and procedures can be ordered, dispensed and registered on the patient’s electronic health record so that anyone caring for that patient has up-to-date information.

Alerts are also automatic when a patient has a condition that could prohibit them from having a certain procedure. Preventative alerts also pop up.

For example, if a patient is visiting a primary care physician for a cold, the electronic health record may remind the doctor that the patient has not had a vaccination, mammogram or other recommended preventative procedure.

“It enhances the ability to make sure that people get the type of service that they deserve,” said Brownsworth. “It begins reducing that fragmentation that has occurred in health care in the past.”