The Winona project: Developing an electronic link

The city in southeast Minnesota becomes a test site for a first-of-its-kind integrated techonology network.

By Tyler Chin, AMNews staff. March 11, 2002.

In 2000, Cerner Corp. asked the medical community in Winona, Minn., to help develop Internet-based technologies and participate in a study to determine the benefits of linking consumers with doctors and hospitals.

The medical community in southeastern Minnesota jumped at the offer. And the ambitious effort to connect consumers to their doctors also led the physicians to consider getting an electronic medical records system to improve care and efficiency. The doctors, most of whom work at two independent clinics, and the town's only hospital system, Winona Health, agreed to implement and share the cost of the communitywide system that would enable them to share patient records.

Today, though, Winona Health Online isn't fully functional, and implementation of the EMR began just last month. The hangup: problems that typically crop up whenever technology is introduced in a clinical setting -- lack of physician automation and integration issues.

Winona's experience provides a lesson for others who are exploring online communication between consumers and physicians or an EMR. Large group practices and health systems could have an even tougher time implementing those projects.

"We're really just now starting to implement the EMR, and it will be 2003 before all the components will be up and running," said William E. Davis, MD, a family physician with Family Medicine of Winona, an independent four-doctor practice. "Many people have the idea that buying an EMR is kind of like buying Microsoft Office -- buy the box, open it and throw the disk in, and you're up and running. It's much more complex than what a lot of people realize when you start thinking of all ... the information that has to be built into the system before you can start." [...]