Steward Health Care’s relationship with MEDITECH has strengthened despite the challenges of the coronavirus, as the two organizations worked together this fall to virtually deploy MEDITECH Expanse across 18 Steward facilities located in Arizona, Utah, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas.
Steward successfully brought their Arizona sites LIVE on September 1st — just 12 months after their contract signing. Subsequent go-LIVEs moved forward between October and November 15th.
The hospitals in each region share a single MEDITECH EHR, which is built upon standard content and best practices provided through Steward Corporate to ensure consistent quality standards across all Steward sites and minimize the build time. Content is further customized at a regional level in line with Steward’s corporate governance.
“Steward is committed to delivering high quality care to patients, and keeping them safe during the pandemic,” said David Colarusso, Chief Information Officer at Steward Health Care. “I am pleased with our team for successfully adapting to a virtual implementation, to bring our community the EHR technology needed to navigate care during these difficult times.”
MEDITECH’s Revenue Cycle Solution, which was a major attractor for Steward, enabled the organization to quickly begin processing claims after go-LIVE. Following implementation, subsets of claims were dropped within four days of go-LIVE, enabling Steward to reach standard auto claim creation with a four-day hold within six days.
Steward’s successful remote implementations were due in large part to the agile, cross-divisional, and collaborative process developed with MEDITECH, which included establishing a Virtual Command Center, a 24/7 bridge line to Steward Corporate, and a MEDITECH on-site executive sponsor to oversee the LIVE.
In January 2020, Steward extended its 20-year partnership with MEDITECH when it signed to implement the Expanse EHR in the 18 sites. This decision was a part of Steward’s “One Platform” strategy to bring all 34 of its hospitals under a single EHR, replacing their legacy vendor systems.
Learn more about how remote EHR implementations have enabled MEDITECH organizations to go LIVE safely during this pandemic.
