SYRACUSE — Taking over new physical space in downtown Syracuse was a step toward virtual changes at St. Joseph’s Hospital Health Center. The 431-bed Syracuse hospital and health-care system took over 22,000 square feet of space in Onondaga Tower on Jan. 31. That building, formerly known as the HSBC Tower, sits at the corner of […]
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The 431-bed Syracuse hospital and health-care system took over 22,000 square feet of space in Onondaga Tower on Jan. 31. That building, formerly known as the HSBC Tower, sits at the corner of South Warren Street and East Jefferson Street.
St. Joseph’s is leasing the tower’s entire ninth floor and most of its 10th floor. It is using the space to house employees tasked with implementing a new electronic health record (EHR) system.
“Whereas in the past, we may have had a specific system dedicated to the operating room or emergency room or a physician’s office, we’ll now have an integrated system that bridges all of those areas more smoothly,” says Jamie Nicolosi, EHR implementation program director at St. Joseph’s. “That will improve patient safety, operational efficiency, and overall quality by providing smoother transitions between care settings.”
St. Joseph’s has 93 employees at Onondaga Tower working on the new system. They are all in new positions, but about 60 had previously been employed in other roles by the health-care organization. The hospital hired about 30 new workers to fill out the implementation team.
The EHR system comes from Wisconsin–based Epic Systems Corp. Epic will be sending between 25 and 35 people to Syracuse to work in the new space at Onondaga tower, Nicolosi says. The exact number of Epic employees at the location will vary week-to-week.
“It will take us about 18 months just to implement it,” Nicolosi says. “And then the refinement of it will be at least another six months, and then it will continue to build and be optimized after that.”
Implementation must be complete by the end of 2014 to conform to EHR “meaningful use” standards. Those standards are tied to reimbursements under Medicare and Medicaid EHR incentive programs.
A new patient portal will likely go online in June 2014, according to Nicolosi. That will give patients access to their appointments and medical history while also allowing them to communicate with their health-care providers.
Patients in certain St. Joseph’s offices may already have some of those EHR capabilities. But the new portal will be more comprehensive, Nicolosi says.
St. Joseph’s views its decision to place the implementation team at Onondaga Tower as a way to support the city of Syracuse and connect with the downtown area, he continues. The hospital, located at 301 Prospect Ave., started looking for a place to put the team in November.
“Space as well as parking are at a premium on our campus,” Nicolosi says. “To create a whole new department, which is essentially what we did — we didn’t have space.”
Onondaga Tower is owned by 360 Warren Associates LLC. That company is a partnership of Syracuse’s CBD Cos. and Cadaret, Grant & Co., Inc.
In addition to the 93 employees St. Joseph’s has at the tower working on the EHR implementation project, it is also moving about 40 technology workers there. Those employees are tasked with working on the hospital’s current EHR systems, Nicolosi says.
St. Joseph’s is not disclosing the cost of its EHR implementation project. It employs a total of 4,993 full-time workers and serves patients in 16 counties.
Contact Seltzer at rseltzer@cnybj.com