FORT WAYNE – The lure of $19.5 billion in federal stimulus money has put some northeast Indiana companies on the fast track.

Parkview Health and Lutheran Health Network have shortened timelines on scheduled conversions to electronic medical records because of the expected federal rebate. And local companies that develop and sell the technology are speeding up growth, hiring software engineers to create products and sales staff to peddle them.

The American Recovery & Reinvestment Act, which was signed into law in February 2009, included a provision to encourage health care providers to adopt and effectively use electronic medical records. The law also calls for regional health information-exchange networks.

But it wasn’t until Dec. 30 that the Obama administration released criteria for determining which electronic records systems will qualify physicians for $44,000 to $64,000 in incentive payments made over five years.

Area health care providers – and the companies that sell computer software to the industry – say the stimulus isn’t changing their business plans. They already saw the need and opportunity electronic medical records present. The money is simply allowing them to pursue the conversion from paper to computer more quickly than planned.

Selling the software

NoMoreClipboard.com has championed electronic medical records for consumers since 2003. The Fort Wayne-based company allows customers to go online and create personal health records. The company wants to get patients involved in keeping medical records, ensuring they are accurate.

When patients are asked to complete forms every time they see a new doctor, the results can be incomplete, inaccurate or illegible. People forget names and prescribed drugs and exact dosages, and they forget dates of illnesses and surgeries – if they remember to mention them at all, said Jeff Donnell, chief marketing officer.

“This paper-based approach is just fraught with problems and can contribute to medical errors,” he said.

Anyone can use a free version of the software. For more options, subscriptions are available starting at $9.95 per person per year or $19.95 per family per year.

Although the company’s original business model was to market to the public, the stimulus has created a burgeoning market in doctors’ offices.

“It is affecting us tremendously,” Donnell said.

To qualify for federal money, health care providers must show meaningful use of the technology, which includes patient engagement. NoMoreClipboards.com can create an online patient portal that looks like it’s the Web site of the doctor’s office or a hospital.

Patients can update records after starting a new drug prescribed by a specialist, for example.

The company is working with Indiana University to maintain a system for the student health center on the Bloomington campus. Put in place a year ago, the system attracted more than 40 percent of this year’s incoming freshman class to create personal health records before arriving on campus. Half of that 40 percent has actively used and updated records, Donnell said.

The company has about 10 employees. Donnell anticipates hiring “several more” this year. The company will add four types of jobs: sales and business development, customer services, implementation (project management), and software development and engineering. These will require “very skilled workers.”

Donnell expects the company will experience “dramatic growth over the next three to five years.”

“I think the stimulus money has accelerated the pace of growth,” he said. “To be frank, the phone is starting to ring off the hook now.”

Lutheran logs on

Mike Schatzlein embraced information technology even before trading patients for hospital administration.

The CEO of Lutheran Health Network said records were done on paper and film when he stopped practicing medicine in 1994. Schatzlein thinks health care has lagged behind other professions in adopting IT, because the field included independent doctors and hospitals that didn’t need to share information – or didn’t think they needed to.

But the rise of health systems – in the 1980s and ’90s – created a need to share information. That’s when the industry started addressing the issues, he said.

“It needed to get fixed, and we’ve been on a mission to get it fixed at Lutheran Health Network, really since 1995,” he said.

Schatzlein doesn’t have a total cost on the project because it has been ongoing for more than a decade. But he knows Lutheran will need tens of millions of dollars to finish it.

The health system has spent at least $100 million so far, he said.

“The stimulus will certainly help offset some of that,” he said. “It will make a major difference.”

Schatzlein anticipates full electronic medical records implementation by 2013.

Lutheran’s efforts – called One Patient, One Chart – are on two broad fronts. The first piece was in hospitals. The second is in doctors’ offices.

In 1995, Lutheran officials started preparing hospitals to use computers in more ways to deliver health care. Technology tracks patients’ vital signs, including pulse and blood pressure. Computers also ensure patients get the right drugs and doses at the right time without suffering harmful drug interactions.

When the project started, drugmakers weren’t printing bar codes on individual dosage packages. Lutheran officials were among those who lobbied to get packaging changed so they could adopt more sophisticated systems, Schatzlein said.

Dupont and Lutheran hospitals are online with the system that buys and stocks drugs, tracking them until they are administered.

Now the health care system is working to tie doctors into the computerized records system, which is expected to allow providers to update patient charts from various sites.

Schatzlein expects this will help with medication reconciliation – keeping patients’ records updated. Patients frequently come in to doctors’ offices, and physicians discover the person has duplicate medications or two medications that counteract each other, he said.

The CEO is in discussions with Parkview to share information at patients’ request. But there is no seamless integration planned for multiple health systems to share information, and Schatzlein, 59, said he doesn’t see it happening before he retires.

Parkview’s plan

Parkview Health is on target to get its hospitals and doctors’ offices on the same electronic medical records system within 18 months to 24 months.

The effort has already cost “tens of millions of dollars,” said Ron Double, chief information officer.

Parkview Health officials aren’t intentionally going after stimulus money, he said. They’ve been following a multiyear plan. But stimulus rebates can provide additional funding to allow them to progress faster, Double said.

Officials don’t know how much stimulus money to expect because they have to demonstrate “meaningful use” to qualify for dollars, he said.

Parkview Health started using some electronic medical records in 2004. The system is more advanced for in-patient care than in doctors’ offices, where many still use paper records, said Brenda White, director of electronic medical records for Parkview Health.

Dr. Jim Stapel, chief medical officer for Parkview Physicians’ Group, said about 25 percent of doctors in the group were using electronic medical records at the beginning of this year. But not all of them were on the same system because some converted to electronic records before joining.

Parkview will invest major money in hardware for doctors’ offices – so each physician can have a laptop or tablet to carry around or computer stations in each examining room.

“It’s just part of doing business as a health care provider,” Double said.

Another part is ensuring the software system and its user meet all required patient privacy rules, he said.

Today, Parkview Hospital shares information with doctors who use its services and electronically feed testing results to their offices, Double said. The information – sent to doctors affiliated with Parkview and those who aren’t – includes diagnostic imaging reports, not the images themselves.

White said Parkview officials are always looking to improve the ways they use technology, including electronic medical records.

“This is truly a journey,” she said, “not a destination.”

sslater@jg.net