Dr. Rich Hines and Betty Barbour, a certified nurse’s aide and unit secretary at Blue Hill Memorial Hospital, review an electronic medical record to decide patient care.—STAFF PHOTO BY JAMES STRAUB

BLUE HILL — On Oct. 1, Blue Hill Memorial Hospital joins six other hospitals under the Eastern Maine Healthcare Systems (EMHS) umbrella when it begins using the electronic patient record system that links all seven hospitals.

The Together Project, initiated by EMHS, provides an electronic patient record with advanced clinical capability to doctors, nurses and other medical practitioners in the EMHS network.

The electronic patient record keeps data ranging from lab and X-ray results to nursing and therapy reports.

In addition to giving doctors and other health care providers immediate and up-to-date data, the electronic system has built-in safeguards to protect against incorrect medication doses, medication allergies, drug interactions and more.

The system makes individual patient information available to practitioners in each of the seven EMHS hospitals: Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor; Inland Hospital, Waterville; The Acadia Hospital, Bangor; Sebasticook Valley Hospital, Pittsfiled; Aroostook Medical Center, Presque Isle; Charles A. Dean Memorial Hospital, Greenville and Blue Hill Memorial.

No matter where in the system patients seek care, their medical records are available.

Dr. Rich Hines, a family practitioner and emergency room doctor, said the electronic record improves the capabilities of looking at a patient’s health care data. The information is available to doctors at home, in their offices and in the hospital.

“It is easy to look at lab studies this way, rather than search through paper products,” he said. “It’s a quicker way to get lab and X-ray results and respond to our patients. It happens sooner and is more efficient because we are not dealing with big piles of paper.”

Eliminating paperwork should please patients as well.

Françoise Gervais, marketing and community relations manager at Blue Hill Memorial, said patients who see their doctor and are then referred to a specialist are often frustrated when asked to answer the same questions several times as they move from the doctor’s visit to specialist care.

“That won’t happen any more,” she said.

Patients visiting doctors at the hospital’s physician practices could also find the new pre-registration program helpful.

By calling the hospital, patients can pre-register for appointments and tests, which puts all necessary information in the system prior to the patient arriving for services at Blue Hill Family Medicine, Bucksport Family Medicine, Castine Community Health Services, Island Family Medicine, Blue Hill Orthopedics and Blue Hill Specialty Services.

The service is expected to benefit patients by allowing them to pre-register for multiple appointments and locations at one time. Patients can pre-register from the privacy of home or office.

The service also will verify insurance coverage in advance of the office visit to help prevent costly insurance denials.

“The greatest gains are in patient safety,” Tim Garrity, CEO at Blue Hill Memorial, said of the Together Project.

He said Blue Hill has made use of electronic systems to share data in the past, but none have been as integrated and of the high quality available through the Together Project.

Dr. Hines said he recently called a surgeon in Bangor for advice on a patient he was caring for in the emergency room, and the surgeon was able to look at the patient’s X-rays.

“What a good way to use the technology, rather than me explaining what I see on an X-ray,” Hines said.

He said with the updated technology in the Together Project, doctors in the emergency room in Blue Hill would be able to feed live video to specialists in Bangor.

“If you need help with major trauma, a trauma surgeon in Bangor can see what’s going on in the emergency room,” he said.

EMHS has spent more than $30 million implementing the Together Project since it first went on line at Eastern Maine Medical Center eight years ago.

“The revolution in technology has made resources available to rural hospitals that never could have been available in the past,” said Garrity.

Garrity said the technology at work in the Together Project could serve as a starting point or baseline for other improvements.

“In the future, there could be a system where all Maine or all American hospitals are talking to each other, but we can’t get there without taking this step.”