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Kohl, D-Wis., said the money will allow Gundersen Lutheran to be among the first medical facilities in the nation to develop a complete information technology system.
“Ten percent of the health care facilities in our country have anything worth the name of an information technology system,” Kohl said. “Information technology is so important in providing health care and reducing the cost of health care.”
In 2007, Kohl worked to provide $189,000 in federal money for the first phase of the project.
With half of Gundersen Lutheran’s patients coming from health care facilities outside La Crosse County, the ability to access up-to-date medical, financial and administrative information is crucial to coordinating care, said Deb Rislow, chief information officer at Gundersen Lutheran.
Gundersen Lutheran already has an electronic medical record system that connects with its regional partners. But the goal is to allow non-Gundersen Lutheran facilities to have “view only” access to the Gundersen Lutheran medical records and then establish a regional health care network capable of complete electronic sharing, Rislow said.
Gundersen Lutheran has invested a large amount of money over about 15 years to get to this point, CEO Dr. Jeff Thompson said, and now hopes to be a national model for how to start such a system.
“That’s why we asked for outside funding, saying, ‘We’ll go through the hard knocks of going through the first couple of cycles, but we’ll be able to teach other people how to do that,’” Thompson said.
It could be another 10 to 15 years, he said, before the entire system is in place.
Dan Springer can be reached at (608) 791-8269 or at dspringer@lacrossetribune.com.
