Community Health Centers Find Practical, Powerful Capabilities With MicroMD® EMR

As CEO and chief information officer of Community Partners HealthNet (CPH), Smith possesses even deeper insight into these challenges—and solutions.

In fact, CPH traces its origins to Smith's extensive review of the EMR marketplace. "One of my main conclusions was that unless a community health center is very large, it needs the economies of scale of a cooperative network organization for group purchasing of an EMR," says Smith, "as well as for the IT expertise and resources to manage and support the software." In response, Smith's organization and six others formed Community Partners HealthNet.

CPH health centers operate 43 medical and dental clinics with 105 physicians, mid-level providers and dentists. With CPH in place, Smith and his associates began the search for a practical EMR.

The CPH selection team spent six months gathering input and reviewing options. Among the criteria, clinicians emphasized an intuitive, logical interface.

IT team members also had their requirements. "To ensure scalability and system performance, the EMR had to be a Microsoft® Windows®-based, client-server system using SQL as the database," says Smith.