MinuteClinic to adopt EpicCare

NURSE PRACTITIONER Corissa Pond enters patient data at a MinuteClinic in a Seekonk CVS/pharmacy. Over the next year and a half, MinuteClinic will switch over to Epic Systems Corp.'s EpicCare electronic medical records system, in place of its own proprietary EMR which is currently in use. / PBN FILE PHOTO/MICHAEL PERSSON
NURSE PRACTITIONER Corissa Pond enters patient data at a MinuteClinic in a Seekonk CVS/pharmacy. Over the next year and a half, MinuteClinic will switch over to Epic Systems Corp.'s EpicCare electronic medical records system, in place of its own proprietary EMR which is currently in use. / PBN FILE PHOTO/MICHAEL PERSSON

WOONSOCKET – MinuteClinic, the retail clinic division of CVS Caremark Corp., has announced that it will adopt the electronic medical records system developed by Epic Systems Corp., called EpicCare.

“EpicCare’s rich platform will allow us to continue to provide the highest quality of care and advance our services through a robust, world-class EMR,” said Dr. Andrew Sussman, president of MinuteClinic and senior vice president and associate chief medical officer at CVS Caremark.

EpicCare will replace MinuteClinic’s own proprietary electronic records system, which is currently used at the walk-in clinics, which are located inside CVS Caremark stores in 28 states. CVS operates more than 800 MinuteClinics where customers can access basic medical services from nurse practitioners and physician assistants, and plans to reach 1,500 clinics by 2017.

EpicCare – the most widely used EMR in the United States – will support MinuteClinic’s model of care and connect MinuteClinic staff with health care providers nationwide that currently use EpicCare, including major health systems, hospital networks and physician groups affiliated with MinuteClinic.

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MinuteClinic Chief Medical Officer Dr. Nancy Gagliano said she expects EpicCare to help MinuteClinic further promote continuity of care with patients’ primary care providers.

“We’ve always been committed to comprehensive record sharing, whether it’s done electronically when compatibility exists or by faxing a copy of the visit summary immediately following a clinic visit with patient permission,” said Gagliano. “EpicCare will help us work more closely with physician practices as part of the medical home team, facilitate co-management of patients, and advance our mission to make health care more accessible, convenient and affordable for Americans.”

For the past 15 years, EpicCare has been ranked No. 1 among health systems with more than 75 physicians in the ambulatory EMR rankings awarded annually by Klas Research, the company said. When its current customer rollouts are complete, an estimated 274,000 physicians will use EpicCare and about 51 percent of the U.S. population will have a medical record in EpicCare.

“Retail clinics play an important role in communitywide care delivery,” said Carl Dvorak, president of Wisconsin-based Epic Systems Corp. “Patients receive the most value in terms of quality, cost and overall wellness when care is well-coordinated across disciplines and locations so we’re glad to have CVS MinuteClinic join the nation’s largest network of care organizations securely sharing patient information.”

MinuteClinic’s full deployment of EpicCare is expected to take 18 months, CVS said.

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