Medical charts go the way of spats and buggy whips

Physicians and staff of the Westchester Medical Group are at the forefront of modern medical care in their transfer of business and medical record keeping from paper to electronics to streamline and coordinate services. Proof of that was on display last month in Rye, where the group hosted a ribbon-cutting ceremony and tours of its new state-of-the-art medical complex at 1 Theall Road.
The 65,000-square-foot building formerly was the headquarters of Lillian Vernon Corp., a catalog retail business. It was vacant when joint-venture investors, including some Westchester Medical Group (WMG) physicians, purchased the building and 7-acre property in 2006 for $9.6 million.
The private multispecialty group of more than 120 physicians invested $6 million in renovations to the two-story building. Architect Andrew Fredman, a Larchmont resident whose architectural firm is in Manhattan, kept the building”™s striking atrium entrance while converting former corporate office space into pods or suites of rooms with open entrances framed by wood porticoes. Each pod is staffed by up to four doctors treating a special area of patients”™ health-care needs. They are connected by artfully furnished and decorated hallways in earth-tone colors that run the width of the building”™s two wings.
The building”™s redesign, with physicians”™ offices adjoining exam, X-ray and surgical procedure rooms in hubs of coordinated medical services, “reflects the way doctors practice medicine today,” Fredman said.
Except for the two-story central atrium, “Everything was gutted,” said Nancy Levesque, the chief operating officer for WMG, who oversaw the renovation project.
WMG is consolidating six smaller offices in Purchase, Rye, Rye Brook and Mamaroneck at the new center. It is staffed by about 50 physicians and about 100 clinical staff. Some physician specialists travel between the Rye office and WMG”™s main medical facility and administrative offices at 210 Westchester Ave. in White Plains, which will continue to treat patients.
“Now patients can choose whatever location is more convenient for them,” said Dr. Simeon Schwartz, president of WMG, which he founded with about 20 physicians in 1996.
The Theall Road center provides both primary care and a range of specialty services that include an on-site laboratory, advanced radiology and CAT scan and a women”™s area with mammography, ultrasound and bone density equipment. An urgent-care center for nonlife-threatening ailments will be open seven days a week and accept patients on a walk-in basis. Other conveniences include a cafÃ©, optical shop and a branch of the local Rye Beach Pharmacy.
“There”™s a real synergy in having people here in the same building,” said Levesque.
Dr. Barney Newman, WMG”™s medical director, said the center will provide to Sound Shore and southern Connecticut communities the same services offered at WMG”™s home base in White Plains. “We want to provide high-quality, more-coordinated and comprehensive care under one roof,” he said. “Our goal is to make it efficient for patients to access the full spectrum of outpatient care. We feel that we bring to Rye and surrounding communities the modern approach to medicine that we feel is needed in today”™s world.
“What WMG is doing is part of a national trend,” Newman said. “The increasing complexity of medicine requires a change in practice structure consolidating the small individual cottage-style practices into larger group practices with more sophisticated infrastructures.”
WMG”™s practitioners have built that infrastructure upon electronic medical records technology. Schwartz told the June ribbon-cutting crowd that the group has invested several million dollars in developing its information technology.
At the new Rye center, all exam rooms are equipped with wireless computers on wheels, also known as COWS. A patient”™s medical history and laboratory, X-ray and other data can be called up instantly there by an attending doctor.
At WMG facilities, the integrated electronic data system gives all physicians access to a common medical record. The paperless system, Newman told the audience at the opening ceremony, “allows us at the WMG to really know our patients better.”
Levesque said prescription requests, referrals and physicians”™ billings and scheduling too are done through the electronic medical records system, as are most communications. “You almost don”™t see any paper. That”™s the goal,” she said.
The electronic system relieves some of the cumbersome paperwork that traditionally has burdened physicians. “What happens is that you don”™t end up at the end of the day, as most doctors do, with piles and piles of charts,” Levesque said. Instead a doctor can follow up on work at home on a computer.
WMG also has introduced new technology in the form of electronic kiosks and evolving software programs that register insurance coverage and other patient information at the check-in desk. The kiosk technology has been used at WMG”™s White Plains center for about a year. Levesque said, “but we”™re still perfecting it.”
“There are some out there” who use the kiosks in their medical practices, “but I don”™t think anybody has taken it to the level that we”™ve taken it for a group this large,” she said. “We”™re pushing the envelope on the technology. I”™m not sure what the ROR (rate of return) will be on it. We know that it has enormous potential. We just haven”™t found the gains as quickly as we have with the other technology because it”™s so much on the forefront.”
Technology has driven the Westchester Medical Group”™s growth since its merger with the Permanente Group of physicians in 1999, when Levesque joined the company.
“We were fledglings then,” she said. “That first year was not fun” as the group struggled with “trying to get it right, understand our business model.”
“This is fun,” she said as congratulatory visitors streamed through the new Rye medical center.
“It took us about two years to get our bearings and then we”™ve not stopped since,” Levesque said. “Our biggest success from day one was the EMR (electronic medical records). Patients love it.”