Boston-based Beth Israel Lahey Health, freshly minted a 13-hospital system as of March 1, plans to focus on IT system interoperability in the immediate future with plans to move to a single EHR a few years down the line, according to a Boston Business Journal interview with President and CEO Kevin Tabb, MD.
"In the short term — and I mean in the year or two post-integration — if you wanted to choose the single worst time to rip everything out and implement one system, if you wanted to guarantee there would be failure, you would do it the year you are also merging disparate cultures," Dr. Tabb told the Boston Business Journal. The system plans to focus on interoperability in the first couple years.
Hospitals in the system are currently on several different EHRs, including Epic, Meditech and a homegrown platform. While the system does not plan to integrate these EHRs in the first year or two as a merged system, Dr. Tabb does see a future where the hospitals move to a single EHR.
"You can't talk about a comprehensive, cohesive system of care without having a single system. Therefore, it was always my belief and is still my belief that in the intermediate to long term, we will need to standardize on a system. But when and which one, I can't tell you yet," he told the Boston Business Journal.
Read the full interview here.
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