Unalaska, AK – The Iliuliuk Health Clinic officially switched over to an electronic health record system this week. That means that instead of having your medical data stored in paper file folders, it will be entered into an electronic system so that it is better organized and more easily accessible to the medical providers. Iliuliuk director Sonia Handforth-Kome says the system should improve the quality of health care you receive.

"We wanted to be able to provide more effective and more efficient health care to our patients, and what the heck does that mean?" she said. "Well, if you can't find something in a patient's chart and you're digging through all these pages and you need to look at one lab result and you can't find it because there are 400 pages in that chart, you aren't being either efficient or effective."

The chart can be accessed by multiple clinic employees at once, so the lab can enter data in one section while a nurse takes notes in another. They can also send memos and instructions to the reception desk and track whether or not the tasks were done and by whom. Handforth-Kome said it's much more reliable than paper clipping notes to a file folder.

It can also make your health care safer. The system tracks drug interactions to make sure your provider is not prescribing things that might negatively interact with drugs you are already on. The system updates itself with new drug information when available.

It also tracks who looks at what charts and when. Only certain people have access to certain parts of your chart, which should help with confidentiality issues. Handforth-Kome said they already try hard to protect patient's information.

"I do a lot of tracking. We're very serious about confidentiality. I do a lot of tracking to find out how the information got out. And in general, I find it didn't originate with one of my staff members. Because people talk about their medical conditions a lot with a lot of people then forget they have."

The new system also makes it possible to collect anonymous data about population groups to help understand health trends within the community.

While the system has many upsides, it also has drawbacks. It will take at least a few months for the clinic staff to enter past medical data into the system and to learn how to operate it efficiently. Using the new system means providers and others have to learn a new way to do their jobs.

"The documentation is not in the order that they're used to it being in. The work flow is quite different because a lot of the physical things we used to do are done electronically now and you have to know where to look for them in the electronic system," Handforth-Kome explained.

That means for the next few months you can expect your appointments to take significantly longer. Some are taking up to two hours. Walk-in patients will have to wait longer, too, while their data is entered electronically. Clinic staff recommends making appointments ahead of time.

The entire system was grant funded for about $600,000.