Western Washington Rural Health Care Collaborative

An official kick off for the CAH HIT Grant project began in August 2008 with chosen vendor, Orion Health. Since this time, Forks Community Hospital has taken the place of Whidbey General Hospital. Forks Community Hospital (Forks, WA) will join Jefferson Healthcare (Port Townsend, WA) and Morton General Hospital (Morton, WA) to implement the health information exchange. Orion's Edmonton, Alberta team and New Zealand team have met with the WWRHCC's IT members on a weekly basis to achieve several milestones. Progress thus far includes a completed VPN, creating the building blocks of our network design, and hardware that is now received and set up. During this time, we have also succeeded in bringing together physicians and staff members of each Critical Access Hospital for a series of Webcast demonstrations. According to Orion Health:

“The Western Washington Rural Health Care Collaborative project is well underway. The requirement confirmation documentation is 95% complete... planning on being onsite in Port Hadlock on Sept 22-24 to finish requirements review and start work on the design documents.”

After a recent, successful three-day meeting held in Port Hadlock, WA, we are on our way to meeting the November deadline. More updates to follow in the coming weeks!