Design and Implementation of a Centralized Electronic Medical Records Consortium in a Rural Area of Michigan

The state of Michigan is divided into two distinct areas, a lower peninsula and an upper peninsula. A five-mile bridge that stretches over the straits of Lake Michigan and Huron provides passageway between the two peninsulas. While Michigan's lower peninsula is heavily populated with access to advanced healthcare, the upper peninsula is a very rural area whose low population is dispersed over a large geographical area and access to advanced healthcare is limited. Due to the low population and geographical separation from the rest of the state, economical access to advanced healthcare is a challenge for the majority of the region. To combat this barrier, nine independent critical access hospitals (CAH) located in Michigan's upper peninsula joined with the region's only level II trauma center to form Michigan's first upper peninsula regional health information network. With a mission to improve patient safety, quality of care and offer advanced healthcare through the regional planning, development, and implementation of health information technologies. This project, which began in 2005 with funding from the Agency of Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), has created a Web-based, portal/repository application that allow selected clinical information to be accessed by authorized physicians and other health care providers for patient care delivery and quality reporting. Project analysis has been documented and is presented in this report.