RSHIP (Regional Shared Health Information Program)
Alberta, Canada

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RSHIP to Implement MEDITECH’s Advanced Clinical System with Help from JJWild

Paul Peck, Vice President, Consulting Group

Regional Shared Health Information Program (RSHIP), located in Red Deer, Alberta, is a collaborative partnership of seven Non-Metro Regional Health Authorities, incorporated as a legal entity with each region an equal shareholder. RSHIP supports a large multi-facility organization with 106 acute locations and over 6,000 beds, and is responsible for delivering patient care to over one million Albertans—about one-third of the province. Total staff from all regions includes approximately 25,000 dedicated healthcare professionals. In a recent article appearing in Canadian Healthcare Technology, RSHIP was recognized as “a national leader in the application of healthcare IT.”

With MEDITECH’s core clinical and financial applications largely in place, JJWild consultants are working hand-in-hand with RSHIP in Canada to roll out Phase Two of RSHIP’s ambitious IT program. In this next phase, RSHIP will implement MEDITECH’s Advanced Clinical System (ACS) of software applications to support their patient safety initiatives and provide the platform for an Electronic Health Record (EHR) to allow physicians, pharmacists, home care and other providers across the province to securely share relevant patient information. RSHIP plans to implement a computerized physician order entry (CPOE) and bedside medication verification (BMV), as well as other error-checking systems for RSHIP’s acute-care hospitals, nursing homes, and home care, public health, and mental health organizations. Pat Ryan, the executive director of RSHIP, anticipates that up to 40 percent of medical errors can be eliminated by using these systems.

Efforts to ensure the success of RSHIP’s ACS implementation have begun well before the planned installation of the applications. RSHIP recently engaged JJWild’s consulting professionals to develop a 36-month plan to ensure that the organization’s goals for patient safety are achieved. The plan will outline scope, costs, required resources, a recommended deployment strategy and budgetary templates to be used during the ACS implementation process. JJWild will leverage the real-world MEDITECH hospital experience of its consultants to help RSHIP ready itself for success.

This isn’t the first time JJWild and RSHIP have teamed up. JJWild has been on board since June 2003 when RSHIP was formed and signed an agreement with MEDITECH to implement their health care information system applications. Since that time, JJWild consultants have provided MEDITECH HCIS subject matter expertise, project management services, governance structure support, and standards facilitation, as well as the design, integration, and installation of the initial technology.

JJWild is also partnering with RSHIP to provide further storage infrastructure consolidation and consulting services for their province-wide PACS (Picture Archiving and Communications System) implementation. The Agfa system will be used in every hospital imaging department, as well as all the independent imaging centers within the regions.

“We felt it was important to continue collaboration with JJWild in order to ensure success of the latest IT projects as we continue to roll our MEDITECH healthcare information system throughout the regions,” said Pat Ryan. “JJWild’s team of experts have faced many of these challenges and their tight working relationship with MEDITECH gives us further confidence that we are on the right track to success.”

Of course, JJWild is delighted to participate in such an important project. Sal Lanuto, JJWild CEO, explained, “JJWild is pleased to be able to leverage our expertise in technology and application consulting to help RSHIP optimize their delivery of healthcare across the province. RSHIP is making incredible strides in amazingly short time frames with their phased approach for an EHR and their patient safety initiatives and we are excited to help.”

The efforts of RSHIP are impressive and ground-breaking. Alan Goldstein, MEDITECH’s director of marketing for Canada, had previously applauded the “unprecedented level of collaboration demonstrated by these Alberta regions” and predicted that “this project will be used as a future blueprint for additional provinces.”

Paul Peck, Vice President of Consulting, has over 25 years of healthcare experience, and focuses on developing leadership skills, methods, and tools that predictably deliver the benefits of IT initiatives on time and on budget. His areas of expertise include IT strategic planning, project management, administration and financial management, patient care, clinical decision support software applications, and technology infrastructure for the acute care and physician practice environments.

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