Skip to main content

Providence Health & Services upgrades EMR capabilities

By Mike Miliard , Executive Editor

Providence Health & Services, the Oregon-based not-for-profit health system, has upgraded to GE Healthcare's Centricity EMR platform.

Composed of seven hospitals and medical clinics, health plans, long-term care facilities and home health services, Providence is ranked as the seventh most integrated healthcare system in the nation. With more than 16,000 employees, it's also Oregon’s largest private employer.

The interoperative functionality of GE's Centricity EMR ensures the same industry-leading solution that Providence has depended on for years, but with additional features to address the evolving interoperability demands of its providers, according to GE executives.

Centricity EMR software provides workflow-based interoperability by creating a single record of problems, allergies, and medications across disparate applications. By embedding standards-based protocols, it seamlessly aggregates and translates information from disparate systems to form a complete patient picture.

All seven of its hospitals and clinics, as well as outside local clinicians using Centricity EMR, will continue to collect, share and access critical patient information through a standards-based health information exchange that can be used across the Providence Health System.
 
"We believe sharing actionable, coded data across care settings will change the delivery of healthcare and break down the information silos that create a fractured experience today," said Laureen O’Brien, chief information officer at Providence Health & Services. "We also believe interoperability will be the way of the future and the future at Providence is now."

"Providence is a perfect example of leveraging a customer’s existing IT investment while delivering the right information everywhere," said Jim Corrigan, vice president and general manager of GE Healthcare IT.  "Collaboration with other IT vendors to deliver standards-based solutions that enable coordination of care for organizations like Providence builds upon the offerings GE has been delivering to health systems for more than 40 years."