(AP) — The LSU Health System has awarded a contract for the first phase of installation of a $116 million electronic health records system.
LSU awarded GE Healthcare a $12.5 million contract on Wednesday to create a film-less and paperless central database and radiology image repository for securely sharing patient imaging data among LSU’s 10 public hospitals and more than 500 clinics statewide.
The system is designed to create a network of coordinated health care that is “safer, more efficient, and less costly,” according to an LSU news release.
Completion of the entire electronic health records system is expected to take five years.
LSU is in the process of procuring software for the next phase of development, which is scheduled for completion by March, culminating in a contract with a single prime vendor for the health records operation. The project is expected to be fully operational by December 2015.
“The selection of GE for the implementation of the radiology information system and picture archiving is the first major building block of the LSU statewide electronic health record system,” said LSU System Vice President Fred Cerise.
“This system will make digital X-rays available at any LSU hospital and clinic throughout the state regardless of where the X-ray was taken, increasing the knowledge about each patient and making treatments more effective.”
Implementation of GE’s Centricity RIS/PACS system, expected to take a year, is scheduled to get under way in late August.
Once operational, LSU doctors and nurses will be able to access critical patient information regardless of where it was acquired in better diagnosing and treating cancer, heart disease, neurological disorders and a wide variety of other illnesses.—-Contact The Daily Reveille’s news staff at [email protected]