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Albany County health committee approves 1-year renewal with Information Management Associates for mental health records system
Summary
At its January meeting the Albany County Health Committee approved a one-year renewal with Information Management Associates to continue providing the Department of Mental Health's electronic health record and billing system; staff cited continuity of access to older patient records and a small contract increase.
The Albany County Health Committee approved a one-year renewal with Information Management Associates to provide electronic health record and billing software for the Department of Mental Health at its January meeting.
Committee members approved the renewal after Department of Mental Health staff said the vendor has supported the county's records and billing systems for decades and that switching vendors would threaten timely access to older records.
Dr. Giordano, Department of Mental Health, told the committee Information Management Associates has worked with the department since 1990 and that the renewal includes an increase from last year of about $2,500. "We have over a hundred thousand electronic medical records in the archive working with this company," Dr. Giordano said, adding the vendor combines electronic medical records and billing in a single system that streamlines work for the department.
Committee members pressed staff on the contract term and the feasibility of exporting archived records to a different vendor. Staff said the county has typically done one-year renewals and that a 2008 request for proposals identified the practical difficulty and cost of migrating decades of archived records'one proposal at that time would have cost about $1 million to migrate the archive. Staff emphasized courts, hospitals and other agencies regularly request historical records and the department relies on rapid access to archived material.
On legal retention, staff said state public health law requires paper records be kept on-site for six to seven years, after which the county sends boxes to the Hall of Records; that statutory retention period does not remove the department's operational need to maintain and be able to access older electronic records.
A motion to approve the renewal passed by voice vote; the meeting record does not list individual roll-call votes or vote counts.
The committee did not set any additional conditions on the renewal during the meeting. Staff said the department has not rerun an RFP since the earlier effort because of the archive and access challenges, and will continue to rely on records preservation and the vendor's integrated billing functionality.
