Tampa Bay Business Journal
The University of South Florida Physicians Group at USF Health has signed a deal for a $2 million electronic health record system from Allscripts.
The system, TouchWorks Electronic Health Record, will be critical to the development of USF's new $88 million Centers for Advanced Healthcare, two planned outpatient care centers in Tampa, said Dr. Stephen Klasko, vice president for USF Health and Dean of the College of Medicine, in a release.
The new facilities, which are scheduled to break ground this spring, will open as "paperless" practices, using the Web-based system to document and share all patient information, the release said.
The TouchWorks system automates and speeds clinical activities such as prescribing medications, ordering lab tests, viewing test results, making referrals electronically and documenting clinical visits. In addition to the new ambulatory care centers, the system will be implemented at all 12 sites at which the USF Physicians Group practices over the next year, the release said.
A 12-person task force from USF spent six months assessing top vendors of electronic health records before choosing Allscripts. Joseph Jackson, executive director of the physicians group, said in the release that Allscripts was chosen in part because it has worked with other large academic medical centers and because its system will work well with existing technology used by the group.
The USF Physicians Group is a multi-specialty faculty practice with 415 physicians at USF Health's College of Medicine in Tampa.
Allscripts (NASDAQ: MDRX) is a Chicago-based firm that provides software and other services to health care organizations
