Companies partner to accelerate adoption of electronic health records in rural hospitals

Anthelio, a health information-technology support company, and Heartland, a hospital information-systems vendor, have partnered to speed up implementation of electronic health records at rural hospitals so the facilities can get federal incentives, reports Ken Terry of Information Week Healthcare. Heartland CEO Angela Franks said the partnership’s purpose is to “migrate its customers to a more sophisticated, cloud-based electronic health record system called Centriq . . . as quickly as possible.”

Anthelio will provide “migration services,” including training and testing and supplement rural facilities’ “sparse IT resources.” The company expects to bring Centriq to 500 hospitals in two years. Franks said said Heartland focuses exclusively on rural hospitals, providing them with systems tailored to health-care organization in rural places. “Rural America has been largely ignored in terms of what they’ve done in these small hospitals,” she said. “These hospitals go from paper to paperless in 12 months, and they truly are the embodiment of what the country is trying to get to with the electronic health records.” (Read more)