#IUseKLASBecause - Ferdinand Feola

Pocono Medical Center (PMC) began as the General Hospital and was founded in East Stroudsburg, PA, on Courtland Street in 1915. The nearby Stroudsburg Private Hospital was founded in 1906 by the physicians of the Monroe County Medical Society. In 1930 they merged and became the General Hospital of Monroe County. Back in the 80’s the hospital ultimately adopted the name Pocono Medical Center (PMC).

PMC first embarked on its electronic medical record (EMR) journey with the McKesson clinical inpatient system in 1998. They chose a best-of-breed path with their other IT needs, choosing to use Siemens' MedSeries4 solution for revenue cycle, scheduling, general ledger, accounts payable and materials management.

Eventually IBEX (now known as ED PulseCheck) came in for the emergency department and eClinicalWorks for our ambulatory needs. Over the course of a decade the PMC moved onto the bleeding edge of healthcare technology. Yet for all this tech, PMC remained scarcely interoperable and deeply siloed.

An Invaluable Partner

In 2013 we realized we needed to become a fully integrated health system; with a single source of data available anywhere in the continuity of care. KLAS served as an invaluable partner to get us started. We reviewed data provided by KLAS for inpatient and ambulatory solutions, service line and clinical support.

When we executed our RFI we were fully educated on the EMR solutions that were changing the landscape of healthcare and creating truly integrated health system EMR environments.

Beyond the raw data KLAS provides, we also relied on our KLAS representative, Mitchell, who helped us to mine the data we needed to review. Our process led us to Epic Community Connect and that eventually led to a merger with Lehigh Valley Health Network.

KLAS allowed us to make data driven decisions. We found KLAS and its staff invaluable on our road to transformation.

Ferdinand Feola
CIO
Pocono Medical Center