Bellaire, Texas-based Harris Health System has extended its Epic EHR to the roughly 10,000 inmates in Houston's Harris County Jail.
The EHR has helped make care more seamless for inmates who were patients of Harris Health — or would be in the future. The jail has also added after-hours virtual visits and telehealth appointments with orthopedic, cardiac and neurological specialists through the new system.
"The jail is one of our clinics," Harris Health CEO Esmaeil Porsa, MD, said in a Feb. 13 EpicShare story. "It just happens to be a very large clinic with a big population, and every patient is wearing an orange jumpsuit. At the end of the day, individuals in custody are members of our community."
The number of inmates made the EHR transition one of the largest medication cutovers in the history of Epic go-lives.