Washington County Hospitals and Clinics (WCHC) secured a grant for approximately $753,000 to upgrade their Electronic Health Record (EHR) keeping system. The system being installed is from Epic Systems, and the process is set to take a year to fully implement, with the project set to begin in November.

John Woodward, the Major Gifts Development Officer for WCHC, talked with KCII about how WCHC sold itself to the USDA to secure the grant funding. “They really wanted to look at how we responded to COVID as a hospital, which is what a lot of this initial grant was. So, what we did was try to communicate with them about our core values, how dedicated we are to our customers, and how we try to provide excellence in service. And we also tried to show that our current systems didn’t allow us to communicate the way we are supposed to.”

Woodward also noted that when the EHRs are transferred to the new system, communication will become much more efficient internally and externally for WCHC. For more information about the record transferring process, contact WCHC. The next meeting of the Washington Board of Public Health will be Thursday, September 22nd, at noon on the 5th floor of the Federation Bank building in Washington.