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“When the office was closed, and the patients were stuck, I felt fortunate that I was in town and able to access their records and make all of these things happen for folks who otherwise had no way to get the care or the medications that they needed. Without eClinicalWorks through the cloud, I couldn’t have provided care to them at all.”
Dr. Brita Bruemmer, Big Sur Health Center
Practice Info
- Big Sur Health Center
- Size: Staff of nine, including one physician, one physician assistant, one nurse practitioner, one registered nurse, and one office manager
- Location: Big Sur, California
- Specialty: Primary and preventive services for all ages, urgent care, dental services, gynecology, dermatology, lab services, acupuncture, and chiropractic
- Service Area: Serving hundreds of patients along a 100-mile stretch of the California coast south of Monterey.
Problem
The stretch of Central California coast where the Santa Lucia Mountains rise sharply from the Pacific is sparsely inhabited and known for its beauty — and natural disasters. Big Sur Health Center stands alone in providing care to residents. Because of frequent threats from wildfires, landslides, and earthquakes, staff recognized they needed a cloud-based healthcare IT solution for care delivery.
Solution
Big Sur Health Center began using eClinicalWorks in 2009 to maximize protection of and access to patient data. That decision paid off during the winter of 2016-17, when landslides and bridge collapses left the community isolated. The eClinicalWorks cloud, along with a well-coordinated response throughout the community, helped deliver medications and reassurance to patients in need.
Results
Big Sur’s providers used cloud-based access to patient records to handle patient requests, ordered medications through local pharmacies, picked up those medications, and then coordinated delivery to stranded residents by helicopter. Without the eClinicalWorks cloud-based EHR, they would not have been able to deliver that care.
About Big Sur Health Center
Located along the beautiful and rugged stretch of California coast known as Big Sur, the Big Sur Health Center is the only full-service medical facility along a 100-mile stretch, and provides primary and preventive services for all ages, urgent care, dental services, gynecology, dermatology, lab services, acupuncture, and chiropractic. The health center also stocks emergency supplies to help residents during times of fires and flooding, as well as travelers and even tourists who may be passing through the area and be caught in a downpour.
